A Notable Book for Younger Readers
-Association of Jewish Libraries/Sydney Taylor Book Awards
"A Selected Bibliography of Grandparents in Jewish Children's Literature for Younger Readers," by Nancy M. Messinger
"As the High Holy days approach, it [Avram's Gift] would make an ideal gift."-Bookviews by Alan Caruba
"The illustrations show the evolution of dress and customs from Eastern European shtetel life to life in the United States. Their colors and detail add to the beauty of the story."
October 10, 2005
Deanna Silverman
Rarely do self-published books come to my attention. Rarer still is their likelihood of meeting my criteria for being worthy of review. But there are exceptions. While not without fault, [AVRAM'S GIFT] captures a spirit of love, continuity, pride and achievement well worth celebrating on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and every other holiday.
Written as a chapter picture storybook, Avram's Gift is essentially a fictionalized version of what sounds very much like vignettes of family history with overlays for relevance. As such, it is almost overloaded with stories within stories linking distant generations to its contemporary hero, Mark, called Markeleh by his grandparents.
That Yiddish e-l-e-h addition to Mark's name is one clue to the love and sense of tradition that pervades this book. It reappears when Mark's dad's father, Grandpa Morris, talks about his life in the Russian shtetl, Aroshka. In Aroshka, his name had been Menashke, but Menashkeleh to his grandparents.
The connection between the long ago past and present is represented in several other ways as well. Most obviously by a photograph of Mark's great-great-grandfather, Avram. Mark finds the picture scary and is disturbed that in their new home his parents want to hang it outside his bedroom door.
Other connections include the fact that Mark's 'Yiddish" name is also Avram, the family's enjoyment of telling and listening to stories, and, above all, a love of shofar including great-great-grandfather Avram's method of teaching shofar blowing.
It's the love of shofar and Mark's determination to not only learn how to blow shofar but to someday blow the longest tekiah gedolah ever at the end of Yom Kippur that tie this multi-generational family story to the High Holidays in general and to Yom Kippur in particular.
Along the way, the story's complementary theme, new beginnings, surfaces again and again. A new home. A new best friend, Ari. Ari's first Rosh Hashanah in America. A new school year. A new grade. Rosh Hashanah. Stories about Grandpa Morris's new life in America. Stories about immigration. Stories about love and the pain of leaving/losing loved ones.
So very many new beginnings—some casual, others poignant—all conveying the mesage that, by remembering, we learn from the past and that, on extremely rare occasions, the past and present can come together and be felt as one in special, tangible ways. Like a picture and a shofar.
"Blowing the shofar with all his might, Mark . . . felt that everyone could hear it. No, not just the people in the sanctuary, but everyone . . . to the very spot where his shofar came from, where his great-great-grandpa Avram sat, with his eyes tightly shut, in the synagogue, listening to his favorite sound."
Using real poeple as her models, Canadian illustrator Laurie McGaw's full colour, detailed pictures convey the gentle, sometimes wistful, tenderness of the text, its sense of connectedness, respect and inner joy. In sum, Avram's Gift is a delightful Yom Kippur family story.
Booklist
Connections across generations . . . come clear in a story that's as sweet as honey used for dipping apples. Stephanie Zvirin
Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter
February/March 2004
Rachel Erlich Kamin
Temple Israel
West Bloomfield, Michigan
"Avram's Gift is a Rosh Hashanah story, an immigrant story, and a story about contemporary Jewish life all in one beautifully illustrated chapter book bursting with Yiddishkeit."
Cleveland Jewish News
October 2003
"The shofar's blasts will be even more meaningful after reading Avram's Gift ... a handsomely illustrated storybook...."
The Canadian Jewish News
September 25, 2003
A delightful, moving Rosh Hashanah story that teaches how each individual can deeply affect future generations. Exquisite watercolor illustrations by award-winning artist Laurie McGaw. Ages 8 and up.
Jewish Book World
December 2003
Mark is an eight-year-old whose affirmative attitude toward Judaism propels the plot of this well-illustrated chapter book. Just about the only thing that he doesn't like is a photo of an old, bearded, stern-looking man which his family reveres but that scares him. As the family prepares for and then observes Rosh Hashanah in the synagogue and at home, with food and friends and services woven joyfully into the story, Mark learns more about the old man, his great-great-grandfather, Avram. The tales that Mark's Grandpa Morris tells at the holiday dinner table flow backwards to his childhood when he was a boy of about Mark's age, then called Menashkeleh. They are familiar ones of shtetl life and immigration, revealing the stern-looking old man in the photograph to be the soul of kindness, whose gifts of love and a shofar traveled across time and space with Menashkeleh/Morris, who settled with his parents and sister in Baltimore. The full-color illustrations, which occur every few pages, are photographic in their realism and they capture the personalities and surroundings of both the modern family and the shtetl-dwellers to perfection.
There is more, however. Once introduced to Grandpa Morris's zeyde, Mark is inspired to learn how to blow the shofar, Avram's gift that now belongs to him. Details about synagogues, about blowing the shofar and about its centrality to High Holiday synagogue services introduce an instructive element into the story. Time moves fluidly once again, this time forward to when Mark has just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. He is asked to substitute for the shul's regular shofar blower on Yom Kippur and when he sounds the one great blast, "Te...ki...ah ge...dol...aaaa...ah" clear and strong, he imagines it sailing "to the very spot where his shofar came from, where his great-great-grandpa Avram sat..." An Afterword addresses readers directly, introducing them to Gary Stein, the real-life shofar-blower at B'nai Israel Congregation in Rockville, Maryland, encouraging them to learn to blow a shofar, and briefly suggesting ways for them to discover more about their own family histories.
The story of Avram's Gift is imbued with a great deal of Yiddishkeit, told in a warm, earnest style that idealizes its subjects without distorting them. Mark is an unusually introspective eight-year-old but the illustrations allow readers of the same age to identify with him by showing him to be a typical American kid, with Senators, Orioles, and Colts pennants in his room, a contemporary looking house, family, and friends, and familiar toys. Librarians will do children, parents, teachers, and clergy a favor by connecting them with this affirmative book. For ages 8 10.
Children's Literature
September 2003
How many of us have seen a portrait or photograph of some historical figure or ancestor with a stern look and a long beard and taken an immediate dislike to the scowling face? Mark has had a similar feeling towards his great-great-grandfather Avram, for whom he is named, since his earliest childhood. And, worse luck, that scary picture is slated to hang in the hallway right outside his bedroom in the new home that's almost built now. By contrast, Mark really loves his grandfather Morris, who will soon be coming for Rosh Hashanah. Mark learns about his grandfather's love for his own grandfather, the Avram in the picture, and about the gift he received from him as a young man leaving Europe for the New World, in this touching and intriguing story.
The holiday traditions are nicely woven into the story of two Avrams, and they tie together with Mark's dream of becoming a really good shofar blower in the synagogue, like Aaron Stein, who can blow a tekiah gedolah for 46 seconds. Artist Laurie McGaw's pictures are flawless—one could step right into them and feel at home. Set in the author's hometown of Bethesda in suburban Washington, DC, with references to her original home in Baltimore, MD, the book is filled with details that keep the story authentic and nostalgic at the same time. A wonderful choice for those long holiday afternoons, it's sure to spark questions about family history and legacies left to future generations.
Article: "New Children's Book Has Toronto Connection"
By FRANCES KRAFT
Monday, 22 September 2003
There's something familiar about the illustrations in Margie Blumberg's new children's book, Avram's Gift—and it's not just the detailed, warmly rendered shtetl depictions that bring the past to life for the story's modern-day protagonist.
While the pictures may strike a chord with Jews of eastern European origin, Torontonians— and members of Beth David B'nai Israel Beth Am Congregation in particular—are likely to recognize the north Toronto synagogue and its clergy, Rabbi Philip Scheim and Cantor Marshall Loomer, who served as models for illustrator Laurie McGaw.
Avram's Gift (MB Publishing, 2003) is the story of eight-year-old Mark, who fears the picture of his stern-faced, bearded great-great-grandfather that his mother wants to hang in their new house. On Rosh Hashanah, over lunch, his Grandpa Morris helps him see his ancestor in a new light, through detailed and affectionate childhood recollections.
And in a plot thread that's particularly appropriate at this time of year, Mark aspires to learn to blow the shofar that is a hallmark of High Holy Day services. The threads are all woven together by the end of the story, which is followed by an afterword that includes information on shofar-blowing and ideas for exploring one's own family roots.
Although Avram's Gift is fictional, it was sparked by a true story about the author's real-life great-great-grandfather Avram Hirschman, whose portrait hangs in her parents' Chevy Chase, Md., home.
On Rosh Hashanah six years ago, Blumberg heard about her great-great-grandfather from her great-uncle Morris, then age 94, who, like the fictional Grandpa Morris in her book, left the shtetl of Aroshka as a child, saying good-bye to his grandfather Avram Hirschman at the train station.
"He took the frame in his hands and brought the photograph very close to his face," Blumberg recalled in a phone interview from her home in Bethesda, Md. "He said if you were to look up the word 'love' in the dictionary, you would find his grandpa's picture there.
"We were all in tears," she said. "He hadn't seen [Avram] in 88 years."
The next day, Blumberg came up with the idea of a book—as if a light bulb had gone off, she explained—and she subsequently interviewed her great-uncle more extensively.
A lawyer by training, Blumberg wrote and published a desk calendar with cartoons and recipes, Is There Life After Chocolate? and co-authored Shakespeare for Kids: His Life and Times. She is working on a third book, about grammar, for age 12 and up, and is reading manuscripts for MB Publishing, the company she established earlier this year.
"I was always read to as a child," she said, and she has always wanted to write books. Renowned author Leon Uris, who died this summer, was a first cousin to her father. Although they lived in different cities, once Blumberg started writing, they began to be in contact and were starting to get to know each other better when he became ill.
Blumberg's brother Mark, a professor at the University of Iowa, has also written a book recently. Body Heat (Harvard University Press) discusses temperature and life on earth for the lay reader, she said.
Finding the right illustrator for Avram's Gift involved poring over "hundreds and hundreds" of books. When Blumberg saw McGaw's illustrations in Polar the Titanic Bear, she knew her search had ended.
The award-winning artist, based in Shelburne, Ont., used real-life models for the characters in the book, fleshing out the shtetl scenes with details borrowed from historical photographs.
She came to Beth David through Linda Kabot, the model for Mark's grandmother and a Beth David member. Kabot became friendly with McGaw after learning about her own family history in the children's book, Journey to Ellis Island, written by Carol Bierman, a relative of Kabot's whom she'd never met, and illustrated by McGaw.
Cubby Marcus, a clean-shaven, personable 68-year-old, was the model for the forbidding Avram. (McGaw added the beard when she did the illustrations.) Although he doesn't look the part at first glance, he was very taken with the scenes for which he was asked to pose.
"There's a magical transcendence that goes on between grandchildren and grandparents," he said at the book launch this summer. "It's something that transcends time."
