
Taback, who is an author as well as an illustrator, has written more than 40 childrenâs books, won a Caldecott Medal (the highest honor in childrenâs book illustration), made The New York Times Best Illustrated Childrenâs Book list twice, received several Notable Book designations from the American Library Association, and won a handful of Sidney Taylor Awards. But even more important, his work is the rare beast that appeals to actual children as much as it does critics. Itâs colorful and antic and silly, and itâs studded with little visual treats and hidden surprises. It blends collage, typography, boldness, and delicious teeny details. His fondness for cumulative rhymes (in books like This is the House that Jack Built and There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly) makes for books beginning readers can read to themselves and giggle at over and over.
So who is this wonder? Born in 1932, Taback grew up in the Coops, the cooperative housing project in the Bronx that housed many immigrant Jewish garment workers. His father was a housepainter and labor organizer; his mother was a seamstress and proud member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Taback was named after Harry Simms, a Jewish labor leader murdered in 1932 while helping the mineworkers in Harlan County, Kentucky, unionize. (The other Simms was memorialized in a ballad popularized by fellow labor sympathizer Pete Seeger.)
Taback attended Camp Kinderland and other socialist Jewish camps, where his artistic talents were applauded and where he was encouraged to apply to the New York Cityâs High School of Music & Art (now known as LaGuardia). From there he went to Cooper Union, served in the Army during the Korean War, and began working as an art director shortly thereafter. In 1974, doing his power-to-the-workers parents proud, Taback began organizing freelance illustrators, helping to form the Illustrators Guild (which later merged with the Graphic Artists Guild) and serving as its first president.
While designers may appreciate Taback for his contributions to artistsâ rights, parents appreciate him for making kids love books. His works are sneaky, because they are simultaneously fun and smart, two great things that donât always go well together.
âSimmsâs work is deceptively childlike,â says Tabackâs onetime editor Regina Hayes, now the publisher of Viking Childrenâs Books. âWhen you begin to really look you appreciate the sophistication of the design, the color sense, the spatial relationsâitâs all incredibly clever.â
And, boy, do his books feel Jewish. His 1999 Caldecott-winning Joseph Had A Little Overcoat is adapted from a Yiddish folk song and set in an idealized shtetl. Josephâs overcoat gets increasingly worn, so Joseph turns it into a jacket, a vest, a scarf and so on, until it becomes nothing. And then he writes a book about it. The moral: You can always make something out of nothing. (A good lesson for tailors, storytellers, and bored children on rainy Sundays.) Kids can peek through cutouts in the pages at the ever-changing, ever-shrinking coat. Hidden in the illustrations are a collaged Tevye poster, photos of different fabrics, a teeny copy of the Yiddish Forwardâso much texture you could plotz.
The book feels airy and effortless, but it clearly isnât. âYiddish was my first language,â Taback said at the Caldecott dinner in 2000. âWhen I started school, I forgot all the Yiddish I knew as a child. So when I started to do the artwork for Joseph, I knew I had research to do. I started at the Workmenâs Circle bookstore on East 33rd Street in Manhattan. I found five or six books on Jewish life in Poland and Russia with many wonderful photos and a video of the Jewish section of Vilna in Poland before World War II. I visited the Jewish Museum to see articles of clothing and other artifacts. ⊠I illustrated the ethnic clothing by using collage fragments from various catalogues. So even as I created the artwork for Joseph, I was making something new from something discarded.â
Kibitzers and Fools: Tales My Zayda Told Me is another explicitly Jewish book. It features old Eastern European jokes, folktales, and Chelm stories interspersed with Tabackâs trademark googly-eyed citizenry, jam-packed layouts and excellent chickens. (No one draws a chicken like Taback.) Itâs dedicated to Sholom Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, and Mendele Mocher Sâforim. Though most of Tabackâs books are like Levyâs Jewish Ryeâyou donât have to be Jewish to love them, but it wouldnât hurtâthis one might not resonate with your average Episcopalian second-grader. The specific rhythms and shruggy, rueful, ânuâ tone are a definite âhamavin yavinâ situation.
But even the non-Jewish books give off Jewish vibes. A note at the end of This Is The House That Jack Built suggests that the famous rhyme was probably derived from âan ancient Hebrew chantââTaback is referring to Chad Gadya. And in his voice, the nursery rhyme does indeed feel like a Passover melody. In I Miss You Every Day, based on Woody Guthrieâs âMail Myself to Youâ (Guthrieâs estate wouldnât give Taback permission to futz with the lyrics, so he wrote his own), Taback finds the sweetly minor-key, melancholy tone of a klezmer violin. A little girl misses an unnamed someone and mails herself across the country to this person. Could that mix of joy and mystery and sorrow feel any more Jewish?
Many of Tabackâs works feature flaps and die-cut holes, but his forthcoming book, Postcards from Camp, due in June, takes interactivity to a whole new level. An epistolary novel about a homesick boy at sleepaway camp and his supportive dad, the story is told in postcards, foldouts and inserts. âItâs Griffin and Sabine meets âHello Muddah, Hello Faddahâ,â says Tabackâs current editor, Nancy Paulsen, president and publisher of G.P. Putnamâs Sons. (See the slideshow for an exclusive peek at the forthcoming book.) The book brought tears to my eyes: My dad wrote wonderful letters when I was an emo little drama queen at Camp Yavneh and Camp Ramah, and I miss him every day.
âWhen a simple story touches emotional strings, thatâs where the best childrenâs picture books come from,â Taback told the Ventura County Star in 2007. (He moved from New York to California a few years ago to be closer to his children and grandchildren.)Â âThe best ones look simple, but they are not simple to do.â

Taback is quite ill with pancreatic cancer. He told me he didnât want to be interviewed for this story because heâs concentrating on enjoying his family and finishing up his work. I hope he rallies. I hope every family is as touched and tickled by Postcards from Camp as I am. And I hope Simms Taback has many more books in him.
Copyright © 2011 Tablet Magazine/Nextbook Inc.
Reproduced with permission.