Noshy Boy loves to eat, Shmutzy Girl is always dirty. In each of the­selit­tle pic­ture books, print­ed on heavy card­stock that is hard to keep­open, they are shown behav­ing true to their Yid­dish names and­in­ter­act­ing with a few oth­er char­ac­ters like Kep­py Girl, who ​“reads alot and usu­al­ly knows what she’s talk­ing about.” Despite the sprin­klin­gof Yid­dish, nei­ther sto­ry has any par­tic­u­lar Jew­ish con­tent. Noshy Boy learns to eat health­i­er foods and ​“feels bet­ter for it.” Shmutzy Girlcomes to under­stand that ​“being shmutzy didn’t make her good or bad,smart or dumb, hap­py or sad…and that’s just fine.” (Not everyone,including par­ents, will agree!) Although their pur­pose is didactic,these cheer­ful sto­ries are told with a light touch and dec­o­rat­ed with­child-like pic­tures ren­dered with a min­i­mum of detail and flat, bright­col­ors. Noshy Boy con­tains a glos­sary of Yid­dish words. Addi­tion­al pur­chas­es for ages 3 – 6.

Addi­tion­al Titles Fea­tured in Review