Rachel's Library

Rachel of Chelm

by Richard Ungar

The citizens of Chelm have always had a reputation for foolish­ness. How can they convince people otherwise and show outsiders their true wisdom? Surely the answer lies in the great city of Warsaw. They will send a delegation to the capital to find a solution.

Young Rachel is an unexpected addition to the group, but as always, she is the one with the answer. The clue to wisdom lies in books. What Chelm needs is a library. In her own creative fashion, Rachel finds a way to build a village library – different from any library you can imagine.

Rachel Captures the Moon and Rachel’s Gift have introduced the endearing village of Chelm – always quirky and always full of surprises.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Richard Ungar is the middle-aged, middle child of middle class parents who writes middle grade fiction, when he's not in the middle of doing something else that is...

And oh yes, his debut novel, Time Snatchers, is coming out the middle of March!

Reviews

[Rachel Nazareth]

This was a really beautiful book about a village, Chelm, which is full of simple people who wanted to show neighbouring villages how smart they were. They travelled and searched in order to figure out what they could build in their local village to boast their own intelligence.

With the help of little Rachel who loved to read, she helped them see that a library would show their neighbours how smart they were - but it would actually end up boosting their own intellect as well!

I loved reading this book with my son, the images were beautiful too. I also picked it up because my own mother told me recently as a child in Uganda, there were no public libraries and she had few books of her own.

I have always known that my son is so blessed to have hundreds of books that I have bought him over the years - but I am really aware now that not every child is in this same boat. I am questioning how I can get books into the hands of kids who don’t live near public libraries or long for books of their very own.

[Mireille Messier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh those townspeople from Chelm - I just love them! In this story, they set out to prove that they are as worldly as their neighbours. The story is wonderfully retold and is cleverly humorous (wait until they draw straws, you'll see!). The illustrations are bright and reminded me of Chagall.
A must for book lovers!

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is our first experience with the stories of the people of Chelm. Right away, we knew that we were dealing with a book that had a lot of tongue in cheek humor. And yet the story is told with such earnestness that it is not a typical book about a fool or group of fools. The illustrations are varied, alternating from small black and white serious charcoal drawings to big, bold Van Gogh-like drawings in a psychadelic riot of neon colors. We enjoyed reading this book together and I especially liked the fact that the town created a library.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love those Chelm stories, only this one is not quite so silly as usual.

[Mckinley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you don't what neighboring villages to think your villagers are foolish, what do you do?

[Julia]

Summary: Chelm is a small town where the citizens have a reputation for being foolish. They figure if they travel to the grand city of Warsaw they can find a way to convince people otherwise.

Evaluation: The illustrations in this book are okay. I prefer pictures that are more detail and these were a bit more abstract, although the color in them is amazing. The story line is unique, but I had to re-read the book to make sure I understood what was happening. It does not seem like the book was very clear about what the problem is and how they decided to solve it. The pages did not connect to each other very well.

Teaching Ideas: I would use this in a second grade mathematics class. I would read the book to the class, then on a few pages I would have the students fill out a worksheet. On the work sheet will be spaces for paper clip, inches/centimeters, and counting clocks. They will have to estimate how tall each person the teacher points to is and record it on their sheet. Then once all of the pages have been gone through go back and show the students how tall the people really are.