Rifka Takes a Bow

by Rebecca Rosenberg Perlov, Cosei Kawa (Illustrator)

Overview

Rifka's parents are actors in the Yiddish Theater in New York, but one day Rifka finds herself center stage in a special role! A slice of immigrant life on New York's Second Avenue, this is a unique book about a vanished time and a place – the Yiddish theater in the early 20^th century―made real through the telling of the true life story of the 96-year-old author as a little girl.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781512492897
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/01/2013
Series:	American Jewish History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	9 MB
Age Range:	7 - 8 Years

About the Author

Betty Rosenberg Perlov, age 96, grew up in the Yiddish Theater, where her mother was an actress and her father a producer. Always artistic, she was a "child star" on her father’s weekly Yiddish radio soap opera. In her 50's, she decided to go to college, where she acquired a BA and then, in her 60's, an MS in Speech Pathology. She has always worked hard to share her artistic vision; this book is her triumph. She lives in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, New York and will be personally promoting her book in the New York area.
Cosei Kawa is an award-winning Japanese artist. His many accolades include the CCBC Choices best-of-the-year list, the Sydney Taylor Book Award Silver Medal, and the Turry's Picture Book Award.

Editorial Reviews

Rifka lives in early 20th-century New York City with her glamorous, devoted parents, who are stars of the Yiddish theater. She marvels at the transformations that they undergo and revels in backstage life, with its dressing rooms filled with makeup, ribbons, and beads; its clever props (ketchup for blood, tea for whiskey); and even its rules for how to perform a kiss (“The man holds the girl’s head between his hands, and he kisses his thumbs”). When Rifka accidentally ends up on stage during a performance, she blanches only for a minute—the theater is in truly in her blood. As the afterword notes, Perlov’s childhood was the model for Rifka’s, but this story is more about the magic of theater in general than about Yiddish theatre in particular. Similarly, Kawa’s dreamy pictures, with their skewed perspectives and fanciful characterizations, make some references to Jewish life, but are more interested in pretend play writ large. Readers will get little sense of Yiddish theater’s distinctive emotional flamboyance or cultural relevancy, though the afterword offers some historical details. Ages 5–9. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"A memoir told with love and nostalgia....Unusual and unabashedly charming." —starred, Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher