Skip to main content

Beautiful Yetta: the Yiddish Chicken

By

by Daniel and Jill Pinkwater
Feiwel and Friends, 2010. Unpaged. Picture Book.


Probably not many free-range chickens live in Brooklyn. Yetta is a happy exception. An escapee from a crate headed for the (kosher, no doubt) meat-packing plant, Yetta at first can't get her bearings in Brooklyn. Where is the grass? where are the trees? Rats tell her to get lost, pigeons tell her to beat it, and she is almost run over by a city bus. But by and by she comes to the aid of a parrot threatened by a cat. "Go away, you stinky cat!" she cries in Yiddish: gay avVEK, du fahrSHTUNkehneh kahtz! The cat does and lonely Yetta is taken in by a flock of wild parrots who do truly live in Brooklyn and who speak Spanish. Beautiful Yetta is nothing if not a multilingual book with dialogue balloons filled with English, Hebrew script, Yiddish phonetic transliterations, as well as Spanish and Spanish phonetic transliterations. Reading this book takes a bit of linguistic work, but it is well worth it for the chance to see Yetta happily adopted as the parrots' new mother, and for the chance to see fahrSHTUNkehneh really loudly and with regard to other things besides cats.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Funny Farm by Mark Teague 2009

By Anonymous
There are things I liked about Mark Teague's newest book, Funny Farm , and things I didn't like. Where should I start? I'll do the "didn'ts" first. The illustrations show animals personified. Well, some of the animals are. The main characters, Edward, and his farm family relatives, all dogs, are humanized. They stand upright, do farm chores, eat at a table, wear clothes, knit (yes, with paws) and sleep in beds. Most everybody else on and around the farm, who are also animals, act like animals. They are outside, roll in mud, live in the barn, and require care from their owners. It struck me the most on the page spread where there are pigs playing in puddle in the rain and Edward, a black and white boxer, watches from inside the house. I thought "You're a dog! Go play with them!" But, alas, he can't, seeing as how he goes through his entire visit to the farm wearing a suit and red bow tie. Another picture that bothered me was the maple syrup pa...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester 2008

By Anonymous
J Fiction 328 pages I almost didn't finish this book. I got to Chapter 4, and was just about ready to quit (a kind of slow story about a girl, name of Piper McCloud, who discovers she can fly, parents freak out, she becomes a social outcast, yadda, yadda) but suddenly, right there in Chapter 4, the story takes a sharp turn and becomes really interesting . Piper finds herself in the company of others like her, but not "fliers", and under the care and authority of Dr. Hellion. I won't even tell you any more. Read this book. Forester does a great job of keeping you wondering who's the good guy and who's the bad? Piper is a likeable, strong, endearing character that girl readers will enjoy. But don't NOT give it to boys! The main male character is an extremely intelligent young man who is one of the ones you wonder about . . . good or bad? This is a good one, well worth your time.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Super Boba Cafe

By
Super Boba Café By Nidhi Chanani New York: Amulet Books, 2023. Comics. 215 pages. 14-year-old Aria is excited to spend her summer in San Francisco getting quality time with her Nainai. She loves helping at her grandmother's Super Boba Café. But she can't help but notice that her grandmother is acting strange and secretive. She refuses to let Aria into the kitchen at all and she disappears at the same time each night without telling Aria where she goes. Meanwhile, Aria is eager to drum up more business for Super Boba Café. She gets a major windfall when the shop cat, Bao, surprises them by having kittens, and Aria realizes this is a major social media opportunity. She knows this will help Nainai's shop, but she is apprehensive to get back on social media after a terrible cyberbullying experience she had back home. As the shop starts to get busier, Nainai is more and more anxious about her secret project. This prompts Aria to investigate with help from her Nainai's neighb...
Post a Comment
Read more