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(New York Jewish Week) — A brand new image guide set on the Decrease East Aspect throughout the flu pandemic of 1918 is ostensibly concerning the values of schooling and neighborhood.
However “Rivka’s Presents” was not created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as you may anticipate. As a substitute, it was written 15 years in the past, after creator Laurie Wallmark made a go to to the Decrease East Aspect’s Tenement Museum, a dwelling historical past museum that highlights how immigrants lived within the neighborhood within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Wallmark first visited the museum round 18 years in the past. On the time, she thought, “Somebody would write a guide about individuals who lived in these tenements,” Wallmark informed the New York Jewish Week. When she returned just a few years later for one more tour, she had the identical thought. This time, Wallmark determined to jot down the guide herself.
Wallmark, who was working as a pc programmer on the time, thought “Rivka’s Presents” can be her first guide. However life had different plans. After quite a few publishers rejected the guide, Wallmark went on to publish six biographies for youngsters about ladies in STEM, together with mathematician Grace Hopper and codebreaker Elizebeth Friedman, and a bedtime guide, “Dino Pajama Social gathering.”
After which, in 2021, Wallmark acquired a name from her agent saying that Random Home needed to publish “Rivka’s Presents.” The guide, with illustrations by Adelina Lirius, was launched on July 11.
“Individuals at all times have a guide of their coronary heart,” Wallmark stated. “This one was the guide of my coronary heart.”
The protagonist of the 40-page guide, Rivka, is a younger woman rising up on the Decrease East Aspect. She is elated to begin faculty — however when her father will get very sick from the flu and her mom has to work in a shirtwaist manufacturing facility, Rivka should handle her youthful sister, Miriam. Regardless of the setback, Rivka is set to study, so she ventures out along with her sister and presents to do chores for the tailor, the grocery store and an aged neighbor in return for classes in studying and writing, math and American historical past.
Being a kids’s guide, there’s a joyful ending: Rivka’s neighbors shock her with items to rejoice her love of studying. And, even higher, her father recovers and he or she is ready to begin faculty.
“Rivka’s Presents” is Laurie Wallmark’s eighth image guide. (Pictures courtesy of Laurie Wallmark)
The guide is a really private one for Wallmark, whose grandparents all grew up on the Decrease East Aspect across the identical time that the guide takes place. “I at all times heard tales about rising up there,” she stated.
The characters, Wallmark stated, are impressed by her members of the family: Wallmark’s grandmother labored within the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Manufacturing unit, and served as inspiration for Rivka’s mom. Rivka’s pleasure for studying, in the meantime, was impressed by Wallmark’s mom. The sprinkle of Yiddish phrases all through the guide — like bubbeleh (darling) and shayna maideleh (lovely little woman) — is in honor of certainly one of her grandfathers, who by no means discovered English.
“After all, each time my dad and mom didn’t need me to know what they had been saying they’d communicate Yiddish,” Wallmark stated, echoing a standard chorus.
Aside from the occasional Yiddish phrases, nonetheless, “Rivka’s Presents” will not be explicitly Jewish in content material — and that’s by design. “The place are the books the place there’s a bit child who occurs to be Jewish? Possibly [he] isn’t even the principle character, however he’s carrying a kippah?” Wallmark stated. “We additionally need variety and inclusion [in children’s books] to incorporate little Jewish girls and boys.”
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An apparent worth in “Rivka’s Presents” is schooling, and Wallmark says the story is right for youngsters who is perhaps afraid or not enthusiastic about attending faculty. “Right here, they see this little woman who can’t wait to begin faculty and may’t wait to study,” Wallmark stated. “[Readers] see that studying might be enjoyable, might be one thing you need to do, not one thing you simply need to do.”
“Rivka’s Presents” is a social and emotional studying guide, which Wallmark credit as one cause why it was revealed now. These kinds of books that “assist youngsters perceive and deal with the challenges of dwelling in at present’s world” are in rising demand, she defined.
Wallmark hopes that “Rivka’s Presents,” like her different books, will “encourage curiosity, assist youngsters study concerning the world round them, and revel in totally different points of the world.”
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