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Title: A Sack Full of Feathers
Author: Debby Waldman
Narrator: David Skulski
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-24-17
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Genres: Kids, Ages 5-7
Publisher's Summary:
Yankel loves to tell stories, as long as they are someone else's. He does not see the hurt that his stories cause, the way they spread and change. Then the rabbi hands him a bag of feathers and tells him to place one on every doorstep in the village. Yankel is changed by what happens and finds himself with his best story yet, one of his very own.
Members Reviews:
A Folktale for Today's Times
This is a wonderful story for children of all ages and religious backgrounds, with a message that is particularly important in an era of "fake news". I just bought a copy for my 4-year old grandson. He's too young to read it for himself, but I know he will enjoy its gorgeous illustrations and understand its valuable lesson about the danger of spreading rumors!
A Sack Full of Feathers
The traditional folktale instructing about the harm of gossip reappears once more in a new, charming picture book. The familiar lesson that tales once told are gone with the wind has a fresh twist: a bad-boy protagonist the age of targeted readers. Yankel takes pride in repeating "other people's stories". He easily finds many of these, as his father owns the village store where shtetl denizens gather to swap news. In his eagerness to repeat to his friends what he hears, Yankel often leaves the store before the end of the story, and, thus, relays false news. The kind, old rabbi hears and knows and devises the plan to teach Yankel the harm of lashon ha-ra. The rabbi hands the boy a sack full of feathers and asks him to put one on every doorstep. Yankel finishes the tiring task only to be told to go collect them all. Naturally, the child fails. A tired, hungry, wet, scratched, unhappy boy confesses the impossibility of the job. The rabbi teaches the lesson and encourages Yankel to tell stories only about himself.
The story and the moral arrive in a wonderfully illustrated book. The shtetl is wildly colorful, but seems to be an up-scale village and therefore, the cleanliness, unpatched clothes and shopping indicate an economy worthy of the color. Scenes and attitudes are a bit stereotypical, but we are introducing a different world to modern children and basics are important. The text is banded in a striking scarf-like frame. The art warmly underlines the plot, stumbling only with ubiquitous spotted cats and a tablecloth from a restaurant in your closest little Italy, nowhere near the Pale of Settlement. It is refreshing to have the moral arrive through a youngster instead of the usual middle-aged sharpest tongue in the village. For ages 6 -9. Reviewed by Ellen G. Cole
Courtesy of Kids @ Teens Read Too
Yankel Liebovich has a very bad habit. Since his father owns the village store in Olkinik, he hears all kinds of stories every day. Unfortunately, Yankel doesn't usually hang around to hear the end of the tale. No, what Yankel hears are things that he knows the other school children will find funny, interesting, or horrifying--and those are the stories that Yankel tells daily.
He likes to brag about the fight between two women who were arguing over a piece of fabric at the store. "She's mean!" the other children comment. He likes to tell about how the baker used salt instead of sugar in his baked goods. "I'll never eat there again!" the other children say.