Adler: The Children of Chelm
I am on a quest to find short enough stories that I can read for children in 20 minutes, with leaving enough time for interaction, having a positive message and lots of pictures for them to enjoy. This is how I came across The Children of Chelm, written by David A. Adler and illustrated by Arthur Friedman. It starts with three short paragraphs about the nature of the shtetl called Chelm. In case you are not familiar with it, its residents supposed to have a unique sense of logic. Some might call them slow, but I would prefer to call it complicated.
Then three stories, involving children, illustrated the point. The first one, The children and their baths, solves the problem that giving weekly bath to the children at the river is dangerous because they rambunctious noise draws the soldier there. In the second story, The day it snowed, the adults figure out a way to bring home the children form the school without having footprints on the fresh snow. In the final chapter, A new school of Chelm, they listen to a child’s advice how to bring down the big rocks from the mountain, after they were already down. These are all fun stories that give the children a moment to think what was wrong with the solution. My only (and slight at that) regret that the illustrations are black and white pen drawings. But at least the yellow paper they are printed on gives them some color. Either way they reflect the humorous nature of the stories.