Every month the principal and a committee of teachers selects a Book Of The Month. This book is read to the entire school, grades K-6, at the same time. In weeks following the reading of the book, classrooms engage in various activities relating to the book.
Mr. Feinberg writes a letter to the staff and distributes the letter with a copy of the book. The letter is a reflection of thoughts, feelings, ideas, experiences, etc. that Mr. Feinberg may have had when he read the book. We call this a text to self connection and we encourage all our children to engage in text to self connections as they hear children's literature or read books themselves. We want our children to think about what they hear and read.
When you are at the school, stop in the library and look at the gallery of enlarged book covers. This gallery represents past Book Of The Month selections.
In this space, every month, we will print the text of Mr. Feinberg's letter to the staff.
Book Of The Month
December 2006
It Could Always Be Worse
BOM, December 2006
Many of our past BOM selections focus on cultural themes or heritages. This book comes from my Jewish tradition. There is a body of commentary on our Torah (old testament) that is called the Talmud. There are many Talmudic references that refer to wise villagers, sages. Many of the references poke fun at ourselves. Another similar self deprecating body of work is the writings of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Anyone interested can borrow a book from me, Singer’s stories for children.
This Yiddish folk tale portrays life in an agrarian eastern European village, probably sometime in the 1800’s. More than likely, your knowledge of life in this setting has come from the popular Fiddler On The Roof portrayal. The word would be shtetl, meaning small village, typically fairly insulated and self sufficient.
Specifically this story tells of a man beleaguered by his noisy life in his small home. The rabbi gives him some very unorthodox (no pun intended) advice. The man follows the advice thinking all the time, this is ludicrous. Obviously, things work out in the end. The moral of the story is that we should be thankful for the things we have.
This book is pretty straight-forward. It is humorous. Help your students get the humor. The word rabbi has the literal translation of teacher. Explain, though, that rabbi is the spiritual leader of the Jewish community. Plenty of parallels to discuss on that point. As was the case with Bigmama’s, you might point out the difference in time (setting) and make the obvious comparisons.
Enjoy the book.
Oh, and remember, It Could Always Be Worse, though it might not seem that way.
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