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Misgivings about 'Crooks'

Reviewed by Kim Stacks Mills

I find myself conflicted after reading "Shlemiel Crooks" (Written by Anna Olswanger, illustrated by Paule Goodman Koz, publisher: Junebug Books: P.O. Box 1588, Montgomery, Ala. (www.newsouthbooks.com; 36 pages – color illustrations throughout, $11.95 paperback with French flaps).
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As a non-Jewish reader, I couldn't imagine sharing such a story with children. The book is aimed toward kids 9 to 12, but it includes robbery, the ghost of a not-nice Pharoah, an instance of gunfire, curses such as "they should die of indigestion" and "his teeth should fall out except one, then he could have a toothache." I know kids see and hear worse than these things on TV, but I just didn't have a good feeling when I was finished with this book.

All that said, I went online and read some reviews for "Shlemiel Crooks" and found that a lot of people love it.

It's based on the true story of a robbery in 1919 at a saloon in St. Louis where a couple of crooks tried to steal Passover wine from the saloon owner. Their attempt was thwarted by the neighbors of the saloon owner, but the police never found the crooks.

The people who loved this book said it sounded like something a Yiddish grandmother would tell them, and that it's a good introduction to Passover. It includes Yiddish phrases and references and would probably be more entertaining read aloud.

The illustrations were interesting, even though some of the drawings didn't exactly match the part of the story they shared the page with. Real photographs of the saloon owner and his wife were included in the back of the book, along with a newspaper clipping of the event from the St. Louis Jewish Record from Feb. 21, 1919.

I think I would recommend that parents skim this book before handing it over to the kids. Of course, when I told my husband my concerns about it, he said, "Yeah, but think about Grimm's Fairy Tales. You love the story of the "Little Match Girl," and she dies in the end." He's got a point.

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Posted by Charles Wheeler on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 5:48 pm

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elkweber

November 15, 2009 - 3:26 am EST

Shlemiel Crooks is a lovely book precisely because it doesn't give us a false picture of the world. Even the most popular Disney versions of fairy tales are full of terrible things. Snow White and Hansel and Gretel are about child abandonment and attempted murder. Cinderella is neglected, etc. Unlike Grimm's Fairy Tales, Shlemmiel Crooks takes the harsh realities of a robbery with a sense of humor. It may not be for the youngest children, but the older ones will see its charm at once. Mine did.

cowie

November 15, 2009 - 5:01 pm EST

I agree with your husband. The Grimm tales are far grimmer than this, and there is barely a mother alive at the beginning of a Disney movie, let alone at the end. This book was given to us by a friend - we are also not jewish, but had read about it in the Times Book Review. When I read it to my children, who are actually younger than the recommended age, I explained to them that the words, while unfamiliar to them, were similar to curses of outrage they have seen in cartoons. We found them kind of funny, and could picture similar scenes of outrage in our Italian, Irish and Scottish grandparents sometimes strange expressions. The book tells a wonderful, true story. It is not your typical children's book, and we should be thankful for that.