Suzy Ultman is an author, illustrator, and toy creator. Her forthcoming board book, I Like Your Chutzpah: And Other Yiddish Words You’ll Like, kicks off a series celebrating Jewish culture and everyday joy. It will be followed next February by Shabbat Shalom: Let’s Rest and Reset. We spoke with Ultman about her early exposure to the Yiddish language, its irresistibly expressive and playful qualities, and her vision for the new series.
What were the origins of this Yiddish primer for kids? Did you grow up hearing the language?
I did grow up around Yiddish. I heard it probably equally from my grandmother and my mom, and sometimes my dad. My grandparents had immigrated to Chicago during World War II from Vienna. And after they retired, they moved to be close to us [in Pennsylvania]. So, from the age of seven on, my grandparents were in the same town as us, and we would go there every Friday night for Shabbat dinner. They had a pretty big influence on my Jewish upbringing.
In terms of the origin of the book, I would say I began about six or seven years ago. As I was coming into myself as a creative person in the board book category, I was starting to make decisions about what kind of shelf space I wanted to take up. I decided that maybe I could talk about my Jewishness. I realized that there are a couple of different reasons to approach that content, and one was for the kid who didn’t see herself when I was growing up in the ’80s; there wasn’t a lot of Jewish representation. When I would have to leave school for the High Holidays, there was a lot of awkwardness and explaining that would have to happen. There was also some fear, growing up with grandparents who had escaped the Holocaust, and not fully understanding that. So for the little girl in me, I wanted to start looking at that and speaking to it. And I wanted to do it for other families out there, so that they could see themselves in everyday spaces. I feel like Judaism for Jewish Americans is kind of delineated just to a holiday, like Hanukkah time. But we don’t really see it around us every day, like in posters in our house, and in toys, and in books.
I’m only one Jewish voice. I don’t speak for all the Jewish experiences. But that was something I wanted to bring to Jewish families. I’ve always felt that I’m sort of a bridge; I’m very much about bringing people together. I learned that from my parents and from growing up in a town where there was a very small Jewish population. It was closely knit, but tiny. And I was the bridge for a lot of people who didn’t know anyone who was Jewish. So, I wanted to create a series that would bring people together from different communities.
What is it about the Yiddish language that you love? And why do you feel it’s important to introduce it to a new generation?
I think that, first of all, it’s got so much personality and texture. And there are words you can say in Yiddish that just encapsulate a moment like no other word. I can still hear my family speaking it. When you have that kind of connection to your grandparents or your great-grandparents in a very specific moment in time—that’s a beautiful thing. And I think, culturally, that’s wonderful to continue passing that along—the joy of it. I know the roots of it come out of a space of maybe hardship and needing to find a common language to speak in so that other people didn’t know what you were saying, or so that you could be free to say what you needed to. But I think that connection and that commonality is what gives Yiddish so much spunk and attitude and specificity and emotion. The words feel good for me to say, so I’ve tried to pass them along to my kids, just in everyday use.
Something that Cecily [Kaiser], my editor, and I talked about, when we were going through the Yiddish words—and we laughed a lot about, because she is also Jewish—is that many of these words are contextual. So, like oy vey, depending on the situation, the tone, and who it’s coming from, can mean many different things. Even chutzpah [has different connotations]. There are certain words I can hear my grandmother saying that have a particular tone and meaning, and other things my mom would say.
Right around the time that I was honing my pitch for this series, I put up a piece of art on Instagram. I was thinking about kids and appreciating all the sides of them. A lot of times we look at people and we give them praise like, “Oh, you did such a great job on that.... You’re such a good artist....” or “You’re so good at math.” But we don’t always give them praise like, “I love how silly you are.” So I did a piece of art that says, “I love your silly.” I Like Your Chutzpah kind of felt like it was the same. I see chutzpah as a really powerful word as a woman: [it means] you’ve got spunk, you’ve got guts, you’re pushing against what you’ve been told you can do.
How do you hope the book will resonate with Jewish kinderlach and their mishpocha, and beyond [to non-Jewish readers]?
I hope it makes them smile and brings them joy. I hope that they enjoy learning new words and learning to say them, because [Cecily and I] had a lot of conversations about how to write them—the transliteration—and there are just some words that, if folks aren’t familiar, they might struggle with. And then, I hope they feel some connection to the Jewish community in a way that’s different than just [learning about] Hanukkah or the Holocaust. It’s a culture that has a lot of different elements to it. These are words that they might have heard before. And the book might bring a broader understanding of who Jews are.
In addition to your work as an author and illustrator, you’re also a toymaker. How do you approach bringing a spirit of play to your books?
One of my main focuses is definitely to make time for play and to be playful. I make sure we schedule in playtime as a family as the kids are getting older, because I feel like it’s an important quality. I don’t think we ever lose it, but we’re kind of talked out of it, or put into spaces as adults where it’s like, “Work and play should look like this.” But play for me is the idea of being able to let go of everything that’s around us and make some space to enjoy the present. It means a lot of different things to different people. Sometimes it can mean sitting and reading a book. And sometimes it doesn’t mean playing a game with other people, or drawing, but making sure that you’re giving your heart and your mind room to enjoy and maybe even access that kid in yourself from way long ago. That is core to all of my work.
When I approach storytelling, there’s this idea of hopefully engaging the kids and the parents in a way that brings them to a playful space, and also there’s a level of joy to it. And then, hopefully, they’ll take [the book] to the next step and it becomes something that they get to play with. It’s slightly different than what I’ve done in the past, where I’ve made the physical books more playful [with interactive features]. This time, I was approaching it as a standard board book, and it was up to me to inject all of my creativity into it without using the physicality of the book as a kind of crutch. Instead, I thought, “How can I do that through the storytelling and the images?” And the Yiddish language is very playful. Kids reading with their parents and trying to figure out what to say, or where to use it, is playful. Embedded behind all of this is the message of bringing people together and teaching them something about the past.
I Like Your Chutzpah: And Other Yiddish Words You’ll Like by Suzy Ultman. Rise x Penguin Workshop, $9.99 board book, Sept. 17 ISBN 978-0-593-75191-6
