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I have enjoyed illustrating many books for children on diverse subjects, but it wasn't until I began to create my
Caldecott-winning book, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (Viking), that I experienced something quite different. It turned into a personal journey of artistic expression and discovery that I had not expected.
Joseph Had a Little Overcoat is a story set in a world I heard so much about as a child, filled with memories of my family and of a thriving culture that no longer exists. It was adapted from a yiddish folk song and is a good example of yiddishkayt, meaning "Jewish life" or "Jewish world-view." It embodies the values and struggles of life in the shtetl, the small villages where Jews lived in Eastern Europe. These were not big-city Jews,
but families of farmers and tradesmen of mixed economic class. The Kohn (or Cohen) family lived in one of these villages where my zada, my grandfather, Meyer Kohn, earned his living as a
blacksmith. I use the Kohn name in the book as Joseph's family name—Joseph Kohn of Yehupetz, Poland. The painting of Joseph having his tea is inspired by a fond memory of my zada, the way I
remember him, placing a cube of sugar under his tongue and sipping his glass of tea while reading his Bible with a handkerchief always tied loosely around his neck.
Yiddish was my first language. When I started school, I forgot all the Yiddish I knew as a child. So when I started to do the
artwork for Joseph, I knew I had research to do. I started at the Workman's Circle Bookstore in Manhattan (New York) and found five or six books and a video on Jewish life in Poland and Russia
before World War II. I visited the Jewish Museum to see articles of clothing and other artifacts. The clothing was drab, probably faded, though beautifully sewn, and the patterns were quite plain and
simple. For the book, I decided to take some artistic license and mix it up with more traditional Polish and Ukranian designs. This made it more like the shetl of my imagination. I illustrated the ethnic clothing by using collage fragments from various catalogs. So even as I created the artwork for Joseph,
I was making something new from something discarded. I listened to Klezmer and Jewish liturgical music, looked at old family photos, and did all that I could to immerse myself in this old world
culture. I wanted to reflect its emotional life, yet I needed it all to be upbeat. I sang. I danced. I did the troika.
I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx (New York), made up mostly of socially aware Eastern European Jews. They left
Europe for a new life in America, Der Goldenah Medina (Streets Paved with Gold), far away from pogroms, with still a sense of community, humor, and values learned from generations of family.
I don't know how many shetl communities existed in Eastern Europe, but they are gone now. What I find special about making picture books is that this old world can be re-imagined and presented to children in an appealing way. Hopefully, they will be entertained by it while learning something special about the world as it once was. •
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About the Author:
Simms Taback grew up in New York City and pursued a varied career in the applied arts as a graphic designer,
advertising agency art director, and a partner in a design/illustration office. He has published his own line of greeting cards and his illustration and design work has been cited by the Society of
Illustrators, Art Directors Club, American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and the Greeting Card Association.
Simms has illustrated about thirty-five books for children. His work has been twice selected for the New York Times
Best Illustrated Book Award and his adaptation of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly was chosen as a Caldecott Honor Book for 1998. The Caldecott Committee described There Was an Old Lady . .nbsp;. as a "tour-de-force in innovative book illustration and design." Simms then won the distinguished Caldecott Medal in 2000 for Joseph Had a Little Overcoat.
Simms has taught illustration and design at the School of Visual Arts and at Syracuse University and has served
as President of the Illustrators' Guild and President of the Graphics Arts Guild, which awarded him the Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Cooper Union, Simms' alma mater,
awarded him the Augustus St. Gaudens Medal for professional achievement in 2001. He presently lives and works with his wife, Gail, in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New
York. He has three children and four grandchildren, who are impressed that he designed and illustrated the very first McDonald's Happy Meal box.
Recent books (and one old time favorite*) illustrated by Simms Taback include:
Joseph Had a Little Overcoat written and illustrated by Simms Taback (Viking, 1999)
Road Builders written by B.G. Hennessy (Viking, 1994)
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly written and illustrated by Simms Taback (Viking, 1997)
*Too Much Noise written by Ann McGovern (Houghton Mifflin, 1967)
When I First Came to This Land written by Harriet Ziefert (Putnam, 1998)
To contact this author or illustrator, please use the information for his or her publisher provided on our list of CBC member publishers.
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