"Der Retakh", a Tale for Children by Ben-Tsion Sidilkovski – Odessa, 1921 – Illustrations by Ya'akov Apter

"Der Retakh", a Tale for Children by Ben-Tsion Sidilkovski – Odessa, 1921 – Illustrations by Ya'akov Apter

Der Retakh [The Radish]. Adaptation: Ben-Tsion Sidilkovski. Booklet no. 1 of the series "Farn kleynem oylem" [For Little Children]. Odessa: Aleukrayinisher Melukhe-farlag, Yidsektsye, 1921. Yiddish. Illustrations by Ya'akov Apter.
A tale for children, illustrated by Ya'akov Apter. A story about a grandfather trying to pull up a radish he had planted in his garden. Successively, more people are recruited to help: the grandmother, the granddaughter, the dog, the cat and the mouse, and only together, they succeed in pulling it up and preparing it for the Sabbath.
The tale is based on a Russian tale titled "The Giant Turnip" (Репка) which was first published in 1863 in Alexander Afanasyev's Russian Fairy Tales (Народные русские сказки). The tale was translated into many languages and adapted repeatedly; Hebrew-readers are most familiar with the adaptation by Levin Kipnis, "Eliezer VeHagezer" (Eliezer and the Carrot).
The illustrator, Ya'akov Apter (1899-1941), born in Ukraine, received traditional Jewish education and during the years 1915-1918 studied at the Odessa School of Arts. During the early 1920s, he worked as an illustrator of Hebrew and Yiddish books and was part of a group of Jewish artists ("The Group of Painters") who together illustrated several books of the "Gamliel Library" of the Omanut publishing house in Odessa. In 1941, he was killed during the Battle of Moscow (see: Ayala Gordon, "Hebrew Illustrations – The Hebrew Illustrated Book for Children" [Hebrew], Tel Aviv, 2005. p. 169).
[6] leaves, approx. 22.5 cm. Good condition. Dampstains to margins. The leaves are detached from each other and from the cover. Stains, tears and minor blemishes to cover.
Only one copy in OCLC.