By
– June 25, 2012
Borrowing the format of the grown-up guest who comes to class to tell you something new and wonderful, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner introduce their 2000 year old man to young students in a free for all Q & A. Actually this 2000 year old man is only 40-something because he dates from 1960’s TV, created then by this new picture book’s two authors, themselves zany, hilarious performing artists and writers. In this book, set in a classroom, young children ask the old, old, old man wide ranging questions about his experiences at school and at home. The clever humor comes from unexpected connections or a play on words. Many answers were funny, but it is unclear whether young readers would find them so. Hopefully they will perceive them as silly and lighthearted and will be absorbed into the spirit of crazy fun. The book inspires learning because it shows what imagination can do with common knowledge. Most children studying cave men do not consider playing with the facts; this comedy puts perspective on historical information and contemporary living, the mark of successful satire. The final question slips in moral advice about not cheating. The tone is gentle and silly; it proves you can have fun and still be a mensch. The color illustrations capture the modern classroom and the ancient caveman’s milieu. The historical scenes are lively and bursting with action. There is no Jewish content in the words or pictures; it is simply a book by two Jews. However, the book includes a CD (differing marginally from the text, but essentially the same thing), that is funnier. It delivers not only the words, but also their timing and inflection, and herein lies its Jewish value. This CD captures the rhythms and Yiddishkeit accent of the famous Jewish standup comics whose style entered mainstream American humor. This is one of our culture’s great gifts to our national arts. Contemporary youngsters who do not know the Jewish origin of this comic delivery can experience it here. The CD is a piece of living history. Recommended for all ages.
Ellen G. Cole, a retired librarian of the Levine Library of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, is a past judge of the Sydney Taylor Book Awards and a past chairperson of that committee. She is a co-author of the AJL guide, Excellence in Jewish Children’s Literature. Ellen is the recipient of two major awards for contribution to Judaic Librarianship, the Fanny Goldstein Merit Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries and the Dorothy Schroeder Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries of Southern California. She is on the board of AJLSC.
