However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint.

4-8)Ī paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere. While not obviously reflective of its Hasidic roots, the retelling is satisfying both as a story of devotion and determination and as a magical look at the nature of light. In an author's note, Kimmel identifies his source as one of the mystical tales of Rabbi Nachman, without further elaboration on the tale itself. Krenina's gouache illustrations are both comical and poignant, lending an appropriately nimble and graceful touch to the tale. From a gift of a bit of the gown's thread he weaves a cloth of light, and thus is able to sew a cloak for the Moon. He repairs the wedding dress so that the princess can be married. Puzzling over the mystery with a magnifying glass in the moonlight, the tailor discovers that the concentrated light causes the thread to grow. The secret of spinning thread from light, once known in this city, has been lost, and the hem of the traditional royal wedding gown, whose fabric can fit any wearer perfectly, has come undone. Krenina here places lotus blossoms and Buddha faces among the winding decorations of leaves and flowers. Acting on a tip from one of his uncle's apprentices, he sails to China and travels to a mountain city called 'The Roof of the World' in search of a fabled cloth woven from light. He dreams that she has asked him for a cloak to keep her warm in the cold night sky, but he doesn't know how he will make an appropriately large and flexible garment. In Kimmel's version, the tailor Haskel from Tzafat is in love with the Moon.

Kimmel and Krenina ( The Magic Dreidels, 1996, etc.) reconstruct a literary fairy tale from a story by Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav.

The Magic Dreidels by Eric A. Kimmel