Simms taback biography meaning

Wikidata item. American writer and illustrator. Biography [ edit ]. Selected works [ edit ]. Original works [ edit ]. Awards [ edit ]. Winner [ edit ]. Finalist [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Portals : Children's literature Visual arts. References [ edit ]. January 18, Archived from the original on September 30, Retrieved November 12, The funky art and the terrific humor are a winning combination.

Barbara Kiefer, Chair of the Caldecott Award Selection Committee, in a statement regarding the choice of Joseph for the committee's prestigious Gold Medal award, commented that "[v]ibrant rich colors, playful details, and skillfully placed die cuts contribute to the book's raucous merriment that takes this Yiddish folk song beyond the simple words.

Though Taback's original works have been acclaimed, critics have also noted the significant contribution of his illustrations to the works of other children's authors—particularly his frequent collaboration with Harriet Ziefert. In his review of When I First Came to this Land, John Peters has observed that, "Taback gives each mishap visual form with simply drawn comic scenes, festooned with cutout photos of flowers, leaves, postage stamps, and other small items.

Please Share that Peanut! Old Lady was also one of ten titles to appear on the New York Times annual best illustrated books list. Euphonia and the Flood [illustrator] picture book Laughing Together: Giggles and Grins from around the World [illustrator] picture book ; reissued as Laughing Together: Giggles and Grins from around the Globe, Sam's Wild West Show [illustrator] simms taback biography meaning book I want to begin by saying here and now that I'm not going to get a swelled head about all of this, which is what I promised everyone at the Penguin Putnam party back in February.

I said everything was happening so fast: my Hollywood agent had called that morning to say that he had signed with Miramax for Joseph the Movie! I just want to make clear that I was only joking—yes, I was—and I'd like to apologize. I didn't mean to call Meg Ryan a shiksa. What's really wonderful about getting this award is that I feel like a relative newcomer to the world of illustration, as if I have only just arrived as a practitioner of this craft.

I also illustrated about thirty-five books during this time, although sometimes I was careless in my choice of manuscript and material. Only a few of these sold well. My father used to ask, "From this you can make a living? And if the Caldecott committee has any doubts at this point about awarding me the medal, let me assure you that I really deserve it.

Let me tell you why. I did my very first children's book for Harlan Quist, and I was very excited. I was quite pleased with the results, and it was reprinted in several languages. The only problem was that Harlan Quist, the editor, ran off to Europe with all the royalties. On the day I delivered the artwork—four months of work—Mister Rogers had second thoughts and cancelled the whole project.

I was offered a book on concrete poetry for children. I was convinced to take it on as a special favor. Everyone knew it was a dud. I said to the editor, "You will always remember me for this book and never offer me another. I was never offered another. I illustrated a picture book called A Bug in a Jug. All the artwork was lost before it was printed and I had to create all new illustrations.

I illustrated a book called Please Share that Peanut! Though I had a lot of respect for the author, Sesyle Joslin, I didn't quite understand the title. That is—until I received the royalty statement. And I could go on from here, but I'll spare you. But I did have some success; I won't deny it. I have a piece in the Smithsonian Collection.

This is the very first McDonald's Happy Meal box, which I designed and illustrated with riddles, puzzles, and old Henny Youngman-type jokes. I know, I just stepped in a poodle. But there is a downside to this experience, too. It was presented to me as a low-budget assignment because it was only going to be a test print run. It turned out to be seven million boxes.

I know the Caldecott committee does not simms taback biography meaning its prestigious award for failure—or even a string of failures. But what you should understand here is that I am making a kaynahora, that is, I am warding off the evil eye. Up in the Bronx, where I lived, if you praised someone, he or she would say, "Don't give me a canary.

I should live so long. The old-world Jews understood not to take themselves too seriously. There is an old joke, told in Yiddish, about a very religious, pious man who complains to God one day: "I go to shule and pray every day. I study Talmud for hours and hours. Why, O Lord, do you reward my brother, and not me, with riches, when he is a gonif a thiefand a person of low morals?

But I will break with tradition here because what is even more wonderful is that you have awarded me the medal for this book—this book which is set in a world I heard so much about as a child and tells a story which is so personal to me. This book is filled with my family and I am kvelling, which means to feel immense pride and pleasure. Joseph Had a Little Overcoat is adapted from a Yiddish folk song and is a good example of yiddishkayt, meaning "Jewish life or Jewish world-view.

These were not big-city Jews, but families of farmers and tradesmen of mixed economic classes. The Kohn or Cohen family lived in one of these villages where my zada, my grandfather, Meyer Kohn, earned his living as a blacksmith. 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, reading his Bible with a handkerchief always tied loosely around his neck.

Yiddish was my first language. I know little of it now. But most American goyim speak some Yiddish or some Yiddish inflection, whether they are aware of it or not; Yiddish has become so much a part of everyday English. Goy means Gentile or non-Jew. To the Jews of the shtetl there were only two ethnicities—either you were Jewish or weren't Jewish.

Simms taback biography meaning: Simms Taback (February 13, – December

This is typical of how an oppressed people see the world. Goy is also used as a put-down, as in goyishe kup non-Jewish brain meaning that you're not very smart. Here is a sample of the words we all use:. I hear that Webster's Unabridged Dictionary contains some five hundred Yiddish words. And who has not heard some of the following phrases and used them:.

The following could be overheard in any Hollywood restaurant, "Listen, bubeleh, that guy is a shlepper. What's his shtick anyway? All he has is cockamamy ideas. We say beatnik and peacenik. OK, enough already. I don't mean to knock your head against the wall. But what about the influence of Yiddish inflection in the telling of a joke or story, or only to make a point?

You were right and I was wrong. You are the true heir of Lenin. I should apologize. In the front row sat a little Jewish tailor. Come up to the podium, comrade, and read this historical statement. You were right and I was wrong? You are the true heir of Lenin? I should apologize?

Simms taback biography meaning: American illustrator ().

And finally, there are at least a dozen words to describe a fool, like shlimazel, shlemiel, shmegegge, shmendrik, etc. 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 visited the Jewish museum to see articles of clothing and other artifacts. The clothing was quite 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 with traditional Polish and Ukrainian designs. This made it more like the shtetl of my imagination. I illustrated the ethnic clothing by using collage fragments from various catalogues. So even as I created the artwork for Joseph, I was making something new from something discarded.

I listened to klezmer and Jewish liturgical musiclooked at old family photographs, and did all 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, made up mostly of socially aware Eastern European Jews.

Even though it was the Depression, they built their own cooperative housing project. It was called the Coops. The people who lived there were called coop-niks. We were all poor, but it was a very special place for me. We had a community center, science and sports clubs, art classes, and even our very own library. They were secular camps. You could attend Yiddish classes there, but it wasn't compulsory.

It was here in these camps that I was encouraged to develop my talent and to go to Music and Art High School, even though I hated leaving the neighborhood. Upon reflection, I see my old neighborhood as an extension of the shtetl life these European Jews had experienced as children. I don't know how many shtetl communities existed in Eastern Europe the word shtetl does not appear in the Encyclopedia Britannicabut they are all gone now.

So is my neighborhood in the East Bronx. It is said that Yiddish is a dying language … and perhaps that is true. But as long as I can say, "I am making a gontse megillah a big deal here," and as long as a good number of people here tonight understand me, who knows? Enough already. To the Caldecott committee: Thank you so much for saying that a book with a novelty aspect is worthy of this prestigious medal and that yiddishkayt can be of interest to young children if presented in an appealing way.

Thank you for this mitzve, and Ah mazaltov to you! To my editor and publisher Regina Hayes: Thank you for seeing the possibility of successfully redoing a story I had published before. It took some chutzpah to let me do this. Thank you for your confidence and optimism. To my art director, Denise Cronin: You are a real mensch and just a pure pleasure to work with.

Thank you for guiding Joseph through a difficult production process. Thank you, Doug Whiteman, for your support. And to my wife, Gail Kuenstler, Az meir binst du shayne, Der einer oif der velt. And to everyone here tonight: Zayn gezundt and may you live to be one hundred and twenty. Thank you. Vibrant rich colors, playful details, and skillfully placed die cuts contribute to the book's raucous merriment that takes this Yiddish folk song beyond the simple words.

Each year the Association of Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, awards the Caldecott Medal to the "most distinguished book illustrated for children during the preceding year. It was old and worn. So he made a jacket out of it and went to the fair. He also takes readers "inside" his award-winning book to discover some of the intricate details and clever nuances woven throughout this warm and humorous tale to prove you can always make something, even out of nothing.

Taback began illustrating books for children in the s. At that time he was also a partner in a design firm and was known primarily as a graphic artist. He did not consider himself a children's book artist and never specialized in illustrating books until about 6 years ago. Until that time, Taback illustrated a book every year or two, which added up to approximately 35 titles by the mids.

Growing up, Taback displayed artistic simms taback biographies meaning. His mother encouraged his talent by enrolling him in private art classes. I was privileged to go to that high school. It was a very strong experience for me because a lot of kids who were artists were not from my working class neighborhood of the Bronx.

It sort of moved me more in the direction of arts and pursuing it as a real career. And from there I attended Cooper Union, which is another free art school where they trained me to be a painter when I graduated. But then I got married and had to support a family so I drifted into graphic design and got jobs as a graphic designer, which in those days was called layout artist.

I worked in the simms taback biography meaning business on staff for some years before I quit and started to freelance. Taback currently lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York state. He generally begins work around 10 a. He can often be found in his studio until the "wee hours" of the morning illustrating his newest book. This follows years of his work in advertising and owning a greeting card company, where he designed a novelty type of card that consisted of die cuts.

You can go back 15 or 20 years and look up the posters that I did for Scholastic and Children's Television Workshop. Those are the only three books that I did collage on, and now it seems I am doing it all the time and thinking in those terms. When I had this idea that I could do There Was an Old Lady with a die cut, I thought that since I am making a hole in the book that I could introduce a lot of elements that looked like cut outs or torn pieces of paper that lay over it.

So the whole book would have that three-dimensional feel to it. It added to the playfulness of the die cut. It is funny because I look at a painting and think, "Well, this is the way it is going to look and I am going to have a hole in it. That hole is not comfortable. It doesn't feel right. So, what kind of elements could I introduce into the picture so that hole just doesn't look so completely out of place?

The use of collage makes readers realize there is another story going on besides the one that is being told through the text. It also invites readers to revisit the book again and again—each time discovering something new that did not catch their eye previously. If readers look closely, they will find that in There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, Taback has actually extended the rhyme through newspaper headlines, posters, recipes, and well-placed food items.

Before beginning the illustrations for Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, Taback needed to conduct research to provide as much accuracy and authenticity as possible. This involved learning more about his own culture and brought back memories from childhood:. My parents spoke Yiddish at home, and that was my first language. I didn't really learn to speak English well until I started school.

Eventually, I forgot all of the Yiddish I ever knew, which is what happens with a lot of kids where English is their second language. So, somehow Joseph provided me the opportunity to get back into it again. I did a lot of research for it. I went to a bookstore in Manhattan, which is run by a Jewish organization called the Workmen's Circle.

I spent half a day down there, and I came back with at least a half dozen books. I actually got familiar with my background again—relearned a little Yiddish and tried to remember some of the stories that my parents told me. I even bought some CDs of Yiddish songs, which I played while I was working just to get me into that frame of mind.

A lot of things came back to me in the process, and I got into it in a way that I didn't when I was a child. The process involved in illustrating a book varies from illustrator to illustrator. Taback explained his own process in illustrating Joseph Had a Little Overcoat. When I do a book I start at the beginning and work my way to the end.

So, the book builds up and gets more involved in some of these things by the fourth or fifth spread.

Simms taback biography meaning: Taback was born on Feb.

I'm already doing stuff I haven't thought of doing in the first spread. I leave the cover for last. I think most picture book people do that. In examining the illustrations in Joseph, readers will see how Taback cleverly incorporates each one of the die cuts into the next illustration.

Simms taback biography meaning: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION. Taback was born

The die cuts are so well done that often it is not apparent that they exist until the page is turned. Taback shared how this is done:. Well, of course it is a bit of an engineering feat because you have to design it so that the die cut works both ways. You initially see that spread and when you turn the page it has to work that way too, so it has to be designed very carefully.

You build the composition around that problem, which is tricky. We had some simms taback biography meaning problems, and you'll notice some of the die cuts are not completely cut out like the one where he has the handkerchief around his neck. The entire handkerchief was initially supposed to be die cut but the positioning was a little hard for them [printers].

I am very pleased with the die cutting in this book in that it shows kids visually how you make things out of something else. I think the die cut works as a very intrinsic part of the story. It is interesting when an artist provides an inside look at the illustrations gracing the pages of his or her book. Small details worked into Taback's background design; characters modeled after family members; significance of names, dates, or places; aspects of the illustrator's life and culture; and other characteristics of the illustrations that may be lost on readers if they do not look closely.

When readers arrive at the page where Joseph is dancing at a wedding, they will see more details such as pieces of a Yiddish newspaper that has been cut up like confetti and thrown on the floor. In the next double-page spread, where two men are standing at the window and gazing into Joseph's house they will eventually be discovered on the next page, singing in the chorusTaback has integrated a great deal of Yiddish culture and family history.

It was [with] this particular spread that I really got into it. I started to use Yiddish sayings like, "when the coat is old only the holes are new. Right over Joseph's right shoulder is a photograph of a Yiddish musical comedy star named Moshe Oysher. To the left of the photograph is a poster of Maurice Schwartz [even though that is not a picture of Schwartz himself] who was the first Tevye from the play Fiddler on the Roof and a very distinguished actor of the Yiddish stage.

Riddle books are popular with children new to reading on their own, and Taback has illustrated several such works for authors Katy Hall and Lisa Eisenberg. Snakey Riddles offers scads of jokes and other wordplay featuring the slithery, scaly creatures, as well as Taback's "cleverly drawn, lively cartoon illustrations," which School Library Journal contributor Sharon McElmeel considered "the best thing about the book.

In addition to illustrating the works of others, Taback has adapted traditional tales as picture-book texts, gracing each with his whimsical drawings. First published in and cited as a notable children's book by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat earned its creator the prestigious Caldecott Medal when it was reissued with new illustrations in In its simple text based on a Yiddish folk song, the book tells the story of a Polish tailor who salvages the increasingly worn fabric left from a cherished plaid overcoat into, a jacket, and then as each garment wears out in succession, a vest, scarf, tie, handkerchief, and ultimately a button.

Designed as an interactive, die-cut book in which readers can watch the amount of plaid fabric gradually whittle away in size, Taback's tale ends with the tailor's decision to weave the remaining threads of his fabric into a story: the story the reader is now reading. Parravano deemed the tale "clever, visually engrossing, [and] poignant.

These were not big-city Jews, but families of farmers and tradesmen of mixed economic class. Teaching the valuable moral "never swallow a horse," the award-winning There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly entertains with a wealth of "details and humorous asides, from the names of different types of birds, to a recipe for spider soup," according to School Library Journal contributor Martha Topol.

Taback's illustrations prove equally entertaining; Topol maintained that the old lady of the title, whose incredible appetite gets her into all sorts of trouble, "looks wacky enough to go so far as to swallow a horse" in this "eye-catching, energy-filled" work. Praising the book's collage-like format—Taback patchworks everything from the pages of nature guides to clips from the Wall Street Journal in his humorous drawings—a Publishers Weekly contributor maintained that "children of all ages will joyfully swallow this book whole.

This Is the House That Jack Built follows a similar plan, featuring what a Kirkus Reviews writer called "deeply colorful, intricately detailed and witty mixed-media illustrations" of each of the creatures that call Jack's house "home.