Joseph Had a Little Overcoat

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Taback, Simms. 1999. Joseph had a little overcoat. Ill. by Simms Taback. New York: Viking Juvenile. ISBN 0670878553. Reading level: Baby-Preschool

PLOT SUMMARY

The main character, Joseph, looks much like Simms Taback (Author) himself. Actually, the author’s photo provided on the back cover looks just like Joseph. The story comes from the author’s favorite Yiddish song, ‘I had a little overcoat.’ In this book, Joseph has an overcoat. He recycles his worn cloth into a jacket, vest, necktie, etc. When he loses his last piece of the cloth, he creates a book telling his overcoat story.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

As one of predictable and engineered books, 'Joseph had a little overcoat’ has simple and repeated sentences which give children good examples in learning language patterns. And the die-cut holes function to make children guess what the cloth would be turned into the next time it gets recycled. The character, Joseph is very creative and positive. Even when he lost his button, he was not frustrated. Instead, he wrote a book about his overcoat story. The theme of the overcoat becomes so familiar that children can easily stay focused on reading. This story includes a moral, which is that “You can always make something out of nothing.”

For its illustrations, the book received a Caldecott Honor Medal in 2000.
If illustrations are an important element in reinforcing the text and help children concentrate on reading, then illustrations of this book do a good job. The various illustration styles used in this book are watercolor, Gouache, pencil and collage. Especially, the perfect match of the gouache and the collage makes this book inviting, attractive and unique. The colors of the gouache and collage harmonize with each other and also with the text, especially the fun shapes of the holes easily get young readers involved.

REVIEW EXCERPTS

Booklist v. 96 no. 9-10 (January 1-15 2000) p. 936
"{This} is a true example of accomplished bookmaking--from the typography and the endpapers to the bar code, set in what appears to be a patch of fabric. Taback's mixed-media and collage illustrations are alive with warmth, humor, and humanity. Their colors are festive yet controlled, and they are filled with homey clutter, interesting characters, and a million details to bring children back again and again."

The Horn Book v. 76 no. 1 (January/February 2000) p. 68
"The text is simple to the point of prosaicness--nowhere near as inventive and jazzy as the illustrator's riff on There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly--but the art sings with color and movement and humor and personality. . . . Taback incorporates detail after detail of Jewish life--the Yiddish newspaper the Morning Freiheit; references to Sholom Aleichem and other writers and philosophers; Yiddish proverbs and Chelm stories--to create a veritable pageant of pre-WW II Jewish-Polish life. . . . Broad comedy plays an important part of the pageant. . . . In the end, Joseph loses his button, his last bit of overcoat; left with nothing, he makes one more item--this book. Don't you lose it: clever, visually engrossing, poignant, it's worth holding on to."

CONNECTIONS

*Activity
Cut and paste children’s favorite faces in the magazine to make their own collage art book. (I got this idea from the page when Joseph went to visit his sister living in the city. This page has buildings background with a funny faces in a window.)
*Other die-cut books with Caldecott honor
Taback, Simms.There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly ISBN: 0670869392
Ehlert, Lois. Color Zoo ISBN: 0397322593