Review: Baila the Klopper
Baila the Klopper
by Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod, illustrated by Shirley Waisman
Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2024
Category: Picture Books
Reviewer: Susan Tarcov
Buy at Bookshop.org
Every morning Baila the Klopper goes all around her tiny shtetl “klopping” on people’s doors to wake them up. It’s her responsibility to make sure everyone in the town is up in time for morning services. And she takes that responsibility seriously. So when the person in the last house is too sleepy to wake up because the teething baby next door cries all night, Baila the Klopper decides it’s part of her job to soothe the teething baby, even if this means delegating the actual klopping on doors to someone else.
Every morning Baila the Klopper goes all around her tiny shtetl “klopping” on people’s doors to wake them up. It’s her responsibility to make sure everyone in the town is up in time for morning services. And she takes that responsibility seriously. So when the person in the last house is too sleepy to wake up because the teething baby next door cries all night, Baila the Klopper decides it’s part of her job to soothe the teething baby, even if this means delegating the actual klopping on doors to someone else.
The story has the cumulative feeling of a round as Baila enlists everybody in the shtetl in the solution to the problem. The story is charming, Baila speaks in perfectly scanning rhyme, and the illustrations beautifully convey the early morning light and the early spring weather. Kids will enjoy noticing the whimsical animals, a goat, a hen, a mouse, a duck.
The story with its shtetl setting has a strong Ashkenazic flavor, but it also has elements that everyone can relate to. The smallest job is part of a wider whole. In that connection, I can't help wondering, who woke the klopper in these shtetlach? Who woke the klopper so that he or she could make sure everyone else was awake?
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