Zlateh The Goat and Other Stories, by Issac Bashevis Singer, Illustrated by Maurice Sendak
       In this collection of traditional short stories, Sendak beautifully brings to life Singer's tellings of stories surrounding Jewish villagers. Two of my favorite stories in the book are "The First Shlemiel" and "Zlateh the Goat." In "The First Shlemiel," a wife decides to leave her lazy husband for the day. While she is gone, he is responsible for taking care of the rooster and the baby. However, Shlemiel, her husband, is extremely lazy and loves anything sweet. He ends up letting the baby get injured and losing the rooster. Fearing his wife's wrath when she gets home, he decides to eat a pot of jam his wife made on the stove that she called poison to kill himself. However, he is not dead when his wife gets home and she says it is because it was not poison but jam. She hoped that telling him it is poison would keep him from eating it. In the end, the baby is safe, the rooster returns, and the Shlemiel's have a very happy Hanukkah. In "Zlateh the Goat," a family of villagers has to sell their beloved pet goat named Zlateh because they cannot afford her. Aaron, the family's son must take the goat to sell but gets stranded in a snow storm. Aaron and Zlateh find shelter in a haystack covered in snow. In this haystack, they remained for three days while waiting for the snow to stop. The goat ate hay and Aaron drank the milk of the goat to stay alive. In this time, Aaron became very attached to the goat and did not sell her. In the end, he brings the goat back to his frantically worried family that is glad they have returned and they did not sell the goat. Instead, his father's business begins thriving again and they have more money than they need to have a great Hannukkah. This book has won the Newberry Honor Award.
        This book is most appropriate for fifth and sixth-grade students. I would like to have this book in my classroom library. However, some themes may be too extreme to keep freely in an elementary classroom. For example, even though Shlemiel's suicide attempt may be painted as humourous in the story, it still is not truly appropriate for young students. Therefore, I would have to pick and choose which stories to share with the students. I would love to read "Zlateh the Goat" out loud to the class because it allows readers to delve into an unfamiliar agricultural society. The students could try to put themselves in the father's shoes and Aaron's shoes. It would be a similar situation if one of the students had to sell a pet that they loved because their parents could not afford to feed it anymore. This connection could allow students to see that even though another culture may have different customs and use different words than they do, they can connect to them in some way through similar experiences. Because of this, these stories would be great to share when the students study about Poland in a World History class. Both the author and illustrator of the book have Polish roots and this is evident in their collection of traditional short stories that were all translated from Yiddish by the author.