THE BOOK RESCUER

THE BOOK RESCUER by Sue Macy. Illustrated by Stacy Innerst.

Here I am in the car with my daughter traveling from Ohio to South Carolina. We are on our way to check out wedding venues for her upcoming wedding. Nine hours in the car leaves some space for reading! My book bag is bigger than my travel bag. No joke! So what am I reading? Well one book is The Book Rescuer.

The Book Rescuer is a picture book by Sue Macy about Aaron Lansky and his amazing ongoing journey to rescue books written in Yiddish. What is Yiddish? It is the language of European Jews. Due to WWII and also the European Jews leaving old lives behind, many Yiddish books were lost or destroyed. Lansky had and still has to this day a desire to keep the history and culture of the European Jews alive through the finding and preserving of books written in Yiddish.

Illustrator Stacy Innerst does an amazing job on illustrations. The pictures are mainly done in browns and grays and blacks emphasizing the history, but then, where the future is portrayed, colors touch the pages. What emerges is a feeling of bringing the past into the present.