Uri Shulevitz (1935–2025)

The author remembers when his family fled Poland in 1939 to escape the Second World War. They became refugees in Kazakhstan, where they were very poor and very hungry. One evening his father returned from the bazaar with a large map of the world instead of bread for supper. Although bitter because he went to bed hungry, when it was hung on the wall, young Uri became fascinated with its colors and exotic place names. He began to copy it on scraps of paper and then to imagine himself a world show more traveler. “And so I spent enchanted hours far, far from our hunger and misery. I forgave my father. He was right, after all.” show less

Having fled from war in their troubled homeland, a boy and his family are living in poverty in a strange country. Food is scarce, so when the boy's father brings home a map instead of bread for supper, at first the boy is furious. But when the map is hung on the wall, it floods their cheerless room with color. As the boy studies its every detail, he is transported to exotic places without ever leaving the room, and he eventually comes to realize that the map feeds him in a way that bread show more never could. show less

A poor couple have nothing with which to celebrate the holiday of Passover in this atmospheric picture-book adaptation of a story from the late 19th/early 20th-century Yiddish-language author, I.L. Peretz. Then a mysterious magician comes to their village, and after performing some extraordinary tricks in the public square, seeks them out, asking to be their guest. Confiding that they have nothing, the couple is assured that their guest has everything necessary to celebrate the holiday, and show more they watch as he conjures all of the comfort and food they could dream of. This however, leaves them with a dilemma: should they trust this stranger's magic...?

We owned a copy of The Magician when I was a child, and I used to pore over it, endlessly fascinated by its simply told but intensely engrossing tale of magic and miracles, and its finely detailed etching-style artwork. There was always something just a little bit creepy about the eponymous magician, even if he turned out to be the Prophet Elijah - a force of good, rather than evil. Passover begins tonight at sundown, so I picked up this book today for a reread - the first in years - and found it every bit as enchanting and spooky as I remember. Recommended to picture-book readers looking for magical Passover stories, or for tales set in the Eastern European Jewish shtetls of the past. show less

Beautifully illustrated, quiet (terse) retelling of the story used by Rabbi Nachman of Breslau. A man listens to his dream and travels a great distance to a city. Once there, he waits; eventually a guard at a bridge shares his own dream that a treasure is buried in a house a great distance away. The man returns to the treasure in his home, builds a house of prayer, and even sends a jewel to the guard.

The journey there and back again, showing the same pictures in opposite order, demonstrates show more how outwardly nothing has changed, while we know that inwardly everything has. Rabbi Nachman's moral is that sometimes we have to travel far to find someone who can teach us what is already within us. I think the journey, the effort, the willingness to risk much based on very little and probably unreliable information, is important. Perhaps the journey, even without any treasure, is worthwhile in and of itself.

It is interesting that the guard, who also dreams of a faraway treasure does not act on his knowledge. In some other versions, he does not receive any sort of thank you. The story does not originate with Rabbi Nachman: see The Peddler of Swaffham. Nor does it end with him: most adventure stories of the journey or quest type have the hero traveling there and back again. Dorothy realizes "there's no place like home." According to Wikipedia, the first known version is by Rumi. It then found its way into the Arabian Nights. show less