The spir­it of East­ern Euro­pean Jew­ry is beck­oned back to life by folk­tales writ­ten and illus­trat­ed by two lumi­nar­ies of children’s lit­er­a­ture. Fun­ny sto­ries about the sim­ple­tons of Chelm, scary sto­ries about imps and demons, and a beau­ti­ful title sto­ry about faith and loy­al­ty cre­ate a world where wis­dom and fool­ish­ness abound and where grit­ty shtetl real­i­ty clash­es with the super­nat­ur­al. This is the first of sev­er­al sto­ry col­lec­tions that Singer, a Nobel Lau­re­ate in Lit­er­a­ture, wrote for chil­dren and none of them should be missed.