Those like myself who grew up with the Chelm stories adore them—they focus on an entire village of silly people who nonetheless persevere and celebrate their Judaism. Still, those who study the Chelm stories or the other authentic Jewish folktales quickly notice there’s a short supply. Only a few authors transmitted and translated those stories from Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe, and so many of our books repeat the same collection of tales. Frustratingly, more is available, free from The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, but almost all remains in Yiddish…until now.

Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature brings readers something we’ve rarely experienced—more Jewish stories from a century past. The title, of course, references the Jewish custom of introducing little children to study by having them lick honey from the page and experience sweetness. This book is likewise a taste of the vanished Jewish world—one many modern children have never gotten to explore. The editor, Professor and Rabbi Miriam Udel, did the research and translation herself in order to share the best of the stories in archive.

This large book is perfect for reading aloud. It begins with holiday tales from Shabbat to Lag B’Omer, as are popular to share with today’s kids. Isaac Bashevis Singer fans will quickly fall into familiar patterns: magic and moral tales blend smoothly, offering readers sweet new Jewish fairytales of rabbis and princesses. After holidays, there’s a massive folklore section with some stories from everyone’s favorite fictional place: the silly town of Chelm. There are also fables, including the delightful rhyming “The Horse and the Monkeys” by Der Tunkeler, a popular cartoonist. Charmingly, Ida Maze contributed a ballad on “Where Stories Come From.” Authors hail from everywhere, from South America to Israel, with plenty of writing from Europe and the United States. There are animal stories, silly stories, and serious ones, all standing out for their moral teachings and the Jewish culture they embody.

Some of the stories focus on education with metafictional fun like “The Alphabet Gets Angry” by Moyshe Shifris. Others are particularly deep, as a tale of sprouting children, “Children of the Field” by Levin Kipnis, becomes a diaspora and assimilation metaphor. Similarly, “The Girl in the Mailbox” is a light story but hints at the confusion of children evacuated to distant lands ahead of the Nazis. “Boots and the Bath Squad” mixes a “Cat in the Hat” type story with the reality of life in the USSR as Soviet agents arrive to bathe a particularly dirty child in a rhyming poem. A historical fiction section also appears with tales of the Gur Aryeh, Judah Abravanel, and the Jews of Spain and Frankfurt. The collection is curated for children, but as with nursery rhymes, the stories offer vague hints of a dark past. As such, they could be used as gateways for teaching about history.

There’s also an insightful introduction by fairytale scholar Jack Zipes and lengthy biographies on the original authors, some of whom have other available works in English. It’s a delightful taste of a vanished world, and more fascinatingly, it’s a collection of stories never available before in English.

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Valerie Estelle Frankel has won a Dream Realm Award, an Indie Excellence Award, and a USA Book News National Best Book Award for her Henry Potty parodies. She’s the author of over 80 books on pop culture, including Hunting for Meaning in The Mandalorian; Inside the Captain Marvel Film; and Star Wars Meets the Eras of Feminism. Her Chelm for the Holidays (2019) was a PJ Library book, and now she’s the editor of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy, publishing an academic series for Lexington Press. Once a lecturer at San Jose State University, she now teaches at Mission College and San Jose City College and speaks often at conferences. Come explore her research at www.vefrankel.com or Her amazon author page or on Twitter @valeriefrankel