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Children's Fiction Jewish

A Telling Time

Illustrated by Kathryn Shoemaker

by (author) Irene N. Watts

illustrated by Kathryn E. Shoemaker

Publisher
Tradewind Books
Initial publish date
Jan 2004
Category
Jewish, Europe, Holocaust
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781896580722
    Publish Date
    Mar 2005
    List Price
    $9.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781896580395
    Publish Date
    Jan 2004
    List Price
    $22.95

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Where to buy it

Recommended Age, Grade, and Reading Levels

  • Age: 6 to 8
  • Grade: 1 to 3
  • Reading age: 6 to 8

Description

This tale is told in three time-frames. On the eve of the Festival of Purim, a grandmother tells her granddaughter how, as a little girl, she heard the story of Queen Esther from her family rabbi. This was in 1939, in Nazi-occupied Vienna, on the eve of WWII. Soon after the rabbi begins the story of the brave queen, soldiers come to arrest him. The young girl begs for the rabbi to finish his story, and the soldiers allow him to do so. When the tale is over, the soldiers permit him to send the children home. But when the children turn to wave goodbye, the rabbi had vanished in the snowflakes, safe from harm, saved by the miracle of a story from long ago. The illustrations by Kathryn Shoemaker perfectly highlight the story's message of hope.

About the authors

In 1968 Irene N. Watts came to Canada from Britain, where she had arrived thirty years earlier from Germany, via Kindertransport. She is a writer/playwright, theatre director, and educator. Her plays for young audiences have been widely produced. Awards include a Vancouver Theatre Alliance Jessie Richardson for Goodbye Marianne (Scirocco Drama and Anchorage Press, U.S.); the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People; the Isaac Frischwasser Memorial Award (Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards, 1999 and 2001); the Government of Alberta Achievement Award for Outstanding Service to Drama. Irene is a Lifetime Member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Recent publications include Tapestry of Hope: Holocaust Writing for Young People, compiled with Lillian Boraks-Nemetz (Tundra Books).

Irene N. Watts' profile page

Kathryn E. Shoemaker is the illustrator of many books for children, among them A Telling Time, My Animal Friends and Floyd the Flamingo and His Flock of Friends for Tradewind Books. She teaches children’s illustration at Langara College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Kathryn E. Shoemaker's profile page

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