Before You Were Born - Hardcover

Schwartz, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1596430281 ISBN 13: 9781596430280

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press, 2005

Synopsis

Once, long ago, the angel Lailah, who knows all the mysteries of heaven, shared her secrets with you. The moment you were born, you forgot everything. But don't worry, in this book, you will lean about all those wonderful secrets again. And you will even know how you got that indentation above your lip! Noted folklorist Howard Schwartz elegantly shapes this legend. Matched with luminous art, Before You Were Born is the perfect book for bedtime - and all the time.

About this title

About the Author:

Howard Schwartz's children's books have won the Aesop Award of the American Folklore Society, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Storytelling World Award. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Kristina Swarner illustrates books and cards, and has paintings in numerous private collections. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 1-3–A child asks for a story about "before I was born." What follows is a tale from Jewish legend, based on stories of Lailah, the guardian of the human soul. It is this angel, readers learn, who watches over the Treasury of Souls in heaven. Once a soul is chosen, she brings it down to earth and plants it as a seed in the mother's womb. There she proceeds to tell the soul the secrets of the world: the languages of the animals and of the wind plus the history of that soul, it's past and future. When the time comes to lead the child into the world, she touches the baby's upper lip, creating an indention, as a reminder to keep this knowledge a secret. "But don't worry," the father tells his now sleeping child, "you have the rest of your life to learn all those wondrous secrets again." As a folktale, this story is lovely and provocative. It combines a compelling explanation of a universal physical trait with a religious view of the soul's journey through life. The textured, mixed-media art has a nice mixture of unpolished innocence as seen in the landscapes and calm serenity that exudes from the composed faces. However, in a couple of instances (Lailah bringing the seed in the form of a flower and reading from a lamplit Book of Secrets inside the mother's womb), it is problematic to depict fantastical elements in concrete terms. This book invites interesting comparisons to Mordicai Gerstein's The Mountains of Tibet (HarperCollins, 1989).–Martha Topol, Traverse Area District Library, Traverse City, MI
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About this edition

• Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1596430281
• ISBN 13: 9781596430280
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Swarner Kristina