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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
36 Friday, August 16, 1985
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IIIIIIIIIIBACK TO SCHOOL
BY ROCHELLE SAIDEL
At the age of 91, children's
author Sadie Rose Weilerstein is
still weaving her K'tonton tales,
and her Jewish Tom Thumb is
now on audio cassette.
With new script and lyrics by
Weilerstein, the cassette is based
on her book K'tonton in Israel,
which was published by Women's
League for Conservative
Judaism. Narration and original
music are by Judy Chernak, who
co-published the cassette with
Women's League.
Weilerstein's character first
appeared in print 54 years ago, as
a children's story in the first edi-
tion of Outlook, the magazine of
Women's League, In 1935, a col-
lection of K'tonton stories ap-
peared in a book called The Ad-
ventures of K'tontvn.
Three generations of children
claim K'tonton as a friend. The
Best of K'tonton was jointly pub-
lished by Women's League and
the Jewish Publication Society to
mark the character's 50th birth-
day in 1980. In the fall of 1980,
K'tonton at the Circus was pub-
lished, •
"There are all kinds of 'real',
and K'tonton is very real to me,"
Weilerstein said in an interview.
"I hear him talking; he tells me
what to write. My husband and I
called him our fifth child," She
conceded it is difficult to answer
children who ask if K'tonton is
real, "If I say 'yes,' I confuse the
children, But if I say 'no,' then
K'tonton is insulted," she ex-
plained,
Weilerstein said that Mon-
ton's adventures are usually
based on real events, on bits of
reality that emerge into a story.
"What you feel deeply remains in
you and eventually comes out,"
she said, She often tells the story
to a child, and later writes it
down, "Each story has a story be-
hind it," she explained, "An idea
get* into my head, and stays in the
back of my mind, The next thing
know, I have a story, and a need to
tell it, Then comes the hard part
— writing it down, Some stories
can take six years to grow in my
mind, and some can happen in a
minute,"
The frail white-haired author
says she 4$?es not want K'tonton's
age of 54 to mislead people,
Please don't think of him as a
tiny middle's* adult with a re,
ceding hairline," she says,
"Thumb"sized people have an
entirely different way of aging,
He's still a small boy, and grows
very slowly, Now he is the size of s
tall man's thumb,"
Weilerstein Won her writing
career
acciOnt," when she
made up stories and poems for her
young son's pleasure, At that
time, there were no ehildren's
books with Jewish themes, the she
hiad to improvise, I in Ho y
tinailay when l,ssea
Web
ehlidan's hook, or a Rood obit-
tiron's Wok in paws!, site old,
woe into Windom!
K'
event
husband found
r r , ow writer •
o story
P
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saved the Jewish people from a
blood accusation.
When her son asked what his
father was reading, she answered
him: "About a tiny person, so
high," sticking up her thumb. He
insisted on hearing the story, but
she didn't want to tell a five-
year-old about a blood accusation.
"So I turned the tiny person into a
thumb-sized boy Touch like him-
self, except for size, who took a
ride on a chopping knife and
wished he hand't," she explained.
"It was my husband who gave him
his name, meaning 'very tiny' in
Hebrew.
"I never started out to teach
with my stories," Weilerstein con-
tinued. "My child already had
these Jewish experiences. But the
books gave new dimensions to
what he knew." Weilerstein dis-
covered, however, that for some
children, Jewish experiences
started with her books, and con-
tinued into their homes. She was
pleased when a Jewish Theologi-
cal Seminary rabbinical student
told her "K'tonton brought me
here,"
Weilerstein, who now lives in
Rockville, Md., was born in
Rochester, N.Y. in addition to the
K'tonton series, she has written
ldren's books as
such Jewish chi
What Danny Did, Little New
Angel and What the Moon
Brought,
She has received numerous
awards for her work, among them
a special Jewish Book Council
award for her "cumulative contri-
bution to Jewish juvenile writing"
and the Women's League for Con-
servative Judaism's Yovel
Award. In addition, the Associa-
tion of Jewish Libraries singled
her out with its Sydney Taylor
Award. Three of Weilerstein's
books have been translated into
French, Italan and Greek, All
have been transcribed into
braille,
Copyright 1885,417A Inc,
Women Handled
Zionism Attacks
New York — American
Jewish women were better pre-
pared to deal with attacks on
Zionism at the recent women's
conference in Nairobi than they
were at similar conferences held
in Copenhagen and Mexico City,
according to Barbers Leslie,
nonlovernmental observer to
the United Nations for the Na-
tional Council of Jewish
Women,
&waiver, after attending the
senference, the secretary-
general Of the World Labor
Zionist Movement warned a
group of Aiwarisan kw/kb ow,
Jaadage that the P100 is
home even mere for
likely hls
w ilm !JAI) Palestinian worse. 4
wearing *a PIA colors of red,
poop md 1441 WO
ivell,prwatl
)1,
rapoil0
rst woman to hood