G1 Review: Joseph Had a Little Overcoat

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Taback, Simms. 1999. JOSEPH HAD A LITTLE OVERCOAT. New York: Viking (Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers). ISBN: 0670878553

This book centers on episodes in the life of Joseph, a Polish Jew alive in an unspecified time but likely in the early part of the 20th century. A farmer, Joseph lives frugally and participates enthusiastically in the vibrant social and religious life surrounding him. At the beginning of the story, Joseph works on his farm while wearing an ankle-length, striped brown overcoat with a number of hand-sewn patches at its hemline. As the story continues and the overcoat begins to fall apart, he transforms it into smaller and smaller articles of clothing: a jacket, a vest, a scarf, a necktie, a handkerchief, and, finally, a button. After he completes each new article of clothing, he wears it during some sort of personal or communal event. For example, he goes to the local fair wearing the jacket, visits his sister wearing the tie, and uses his handkerchief when drinking a cup of hot tea with lemon. At the climax of the story, when Joseph loses his button, the last remaining bit of his beloved overcoat, he maintains his practical spirit by not bemoaning his loss. Instead, he sits down at his desk with his art supplies and creates a book about the experience.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS
From beginning to end, this seems to be a very “personal” book for its author, Simms Taback. In addition to hand-drawing the text, Taback inserts himself into the book on the title page with his parenthetical comment, “and there’s a moral, too!” after he provides an overview of the plot. At the end of the book in a note addressed to readers, he discusses both his creative process and the background of the story. What began as an adaptation of a Yiddish folk song from his youth (complete with music and lyrics) becomes a contextualized story. Through his own experience, readers receive a glimpse into the history and beliefs of rural Jewish life in Eastern Europe. To the author, this is a life worth recalling and remembering. In his note at the end, Taback further cements his connection with the simple sentence, “Some people noticed Joseph looked a lot like me.”

At each juncture of the story until its climax, Taback uses straightforward declarative sentences to depict Joseph’s reality. The first sentence always begins with “Joseph had” and consists of five words, while the second sentence is the blunt and realistic “It got old and worn.” Once Joseph understands his reality, he does something to improve it. These all begin with “So he…” and end with him wearing his whittled down piece of clothing for some occasion. This repetition of form focuses readers on how Joseph responds to the world around him through the various manifestations of his retooled overcoat. Younger readers listening to the story, and even older readers without perhaps a high level of proficiency in reading, are comforted and able to anticipate the movement of the plot.

When Joseph loses his button, the story takes an unfamiliar turn, but the language remains largely the same until Taback delivers the moral at the end of the story. Even the moral is broken up into two parts, the first a complete sentence, the second a fragment. The language stays simple throughout, and the reader is free to concentrate on the action.

Joseph is a poor Jewish farmer, residing in Poland during the early to middle part of the last century. None of these “facts” about the main character and setting are delivered to the reader through the text. Instead, they are relayed through the design and illustrations of the book. Taback uses a number of different media for his stunning artwork that enlivens the story, helpfully listing each in the beginning of the book. His settings and characters are rendered without perspective, almost in the manner of folk art, rather realistically but with rounded and slanting lines giving everything a homemade feeling. Likewise, he uses deep earthy colors in his backgrounds and minor characters and balances these with brighter colors, most often in Joseph’s yellow shirt, to provide a focal point, but also evident in some of his other characters and settings. Die cuts throughout the book follow the transformation of his overcoat.

In many of the scenes, Taback uses white or some lighter hue for a newspaper page, pithy saying, sheet music, book cover or some other cultural marker. Flipping through the book, readers’ eyes are drawn to these often humorous pieces. Through them more information about the author’s understanding of his own history through the lives of Joseph and his contemporaries emerges. “Better to have an ugly patch than a beautiful hole,” “When the coat is old, only the holes are new,” “If a pauper eats a chicken, one of them is sick,” and “What one has, one doesn’t want, and what one wants, one doesn’t have,” are examples of the homespun wisdom relating to the overall themes of thrift, making do and dreaming of life in another place. To support this notion, there are numerous letters and postcards addressed to Joseph from relatives and others who have emigrated, not to mention a drawing of and allusions to the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” There’s a certain practicality about day-to-day life tinged with possibilities of a more lucrative future, away from the hardships of farming in Poland.

Taback also uses his background drawings to show the bounty of flowers, crops, animals and neighbors that Joseph has, especially before he loses his button. All are drawn with realistic touches. Flowers packed tightly represent spring, different types of cabbages the harvest season, and falling leaves the autumn. Similarly, in the interior of his house, details are literally stuffed into the two-page spreads. However, when Joseph loses the button, he appears in front of a stark black background, with the sentence “Now he had nothing” showing his momentary loss before he takes a positive action.

Another artistic feature is that the characters (people and animals alike) are always looking at Joseph, reminding readers that he is the center of this story. While his neighbors and relatives merely seem to be looking at him, those in close proximity to him, his animals, seem to be at times incredulous, skeptical or sympathetic toward his actions, injecting more humor into the story. Along this same line, Taback combines a number of period and modern photographs of people, especially to decorate the walls of Joseph’s house and to show apartment dwellers in the city scene. Many of the older photographs are of rabbis or historical personages, reflecting Taback’s Jewish heritage. Many of the more modern photographs seem to be of people he knows. These add to the personalized mixture of text and art represented in this straightforward, detailed story.

REVIEW EXCERPT(S) & AWARDS
--"A book bursting at the seams with ingenuity and creative spirit (whose) rhythm and repetition make it a perfect storytime read-aloud." (SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, January 2000)
--"A true example of accomplished bookmaking… filled with homey clutter, interesting characters, and a million details to bring children back again and again." (BOOKLIST, January 2000)
--"With its effective repetition and an abundance of visual humor, this is tailor-made for reading aloud." (PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY, November 1999)
--Caldecott Medal Winner: 2000

CONNECTIONS
--A great way to teach children about thrift and not wasting resources, in addition to reminding them of the need to persevere and stay positive during rough times.
--Can easily be adapted to performance, with the overall flow of the story and the Yiddish folk song at the end.
--Other books by Simms Taback, especially to show how he reworks fairy tales or incorporates morals for children:
THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLLOWED A FLY, illustrated by Pam Adams. ISBN: 9781904550624
THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT. ISBN: 978-0142402009