Baila the Klopper by Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod with illustrations by Shirley Waisman; Minneapolis, Minnesota: Kar-Ben Publishing © 2024; ISBN 9708765-603345; 32 pages; $19.95
SAN DIEGO – In Eastern Europe before alarm clocks were generally available, a Jewish person known as a “klopper” was appointed to knock on doors early in the morning to help assure people would get to morning prayers on time.
In this story, Baila, a young girl, is the klopper. She finds that people have excuses about why they can’t awaken in the morning, usually blaming someone else. This one can’t sleep because a neighbor plays klezmer music all night; that one can’t sleep because the neighbor’s baby is crying, and so forth.
In the end, Baila solves everyone’s problems by offering to take the bagels out of the oven while the baker is praying in shul. The bagels are perfect for the baby’s teething, so baby doesn’t cry anymore, which permits the klezmer musician to get some sleep, and up the line of complaints.
MacLeod offers us the type of rhymes in English that might have been recited in Yiddish by a klopper. Shirley Waisman’s illustrations will help young readers between the ages of 4 and 8 imagine what an Eastern European village of the early 20th century looked like, and how people of that era and locale dressed.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via sdheritage@cox.net