Features

Good books, old friends

Details

By Kara Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

Hits: 516

I would like to celebrate it with you this year (Nov. 13 through Nov. 19) by introducing a heroine of children's literature with just as much charm and appeal as Raggedy Anne.

Although there is no doll of her as far as I know, I hope she will have an equally positive impact on you.

Molly is the legacy of the late children's author Barbara Cohen. She appeared first in the 1983 book Molly's Pilgrim, illustrated by Michael J. Deraney, and again in the 1994 companion volume Make A Wish, Molly, illustrated by Jan Naimo Jones. Both were published by Bantam Doubleday Dell.

In both books, Molly is a third grader at the elementary school in Winter Hill, N.J. in the early part of the century. She and her parents are Russian-Jewish immigrants who first settled in New York City in an ethnic neighborhood where they blended quietly into the diverse throngs of other new immigrant families but had to live in an unsafe tenement and survive on Molly's father's earnings from an unsafe factory job.

In Winter Hill, Molly's father has a good job in Mr. Brodsky's store and the family lives in the comparatively luxurious apartment Mr. Brodsky owns above the store. Unfortunately they find themselves conspicuous and out of place in an otherwise homogeneous suburban population.

They must now confront prejudice and ignorance of their Russian-Jewish heritage. How the family deals with their new neighbors' attitude toward them is told from Molly's point of view in each book.

The first book, Molly's Pilgrim, is a Thanksgiving story in which Molly learns about the original tradition behind the American holiday, and with her mother's help, lends a meaningful new dimension to it for her teacher and classmates.

Molly has grown ashamed of both her appearance and her origins after being taunted continually by her classmates, most often with the bully Elizabeth's hurtful refrain: "Jol-ly Mol-ly, your eyes are awf'ly small. Jol-ly Mol-ly, your nose is awf'ly tall."

When she tells her mother about this persecution and her wish to return to their home country to escape it, her mother explains persecution against Jews was much worse in Goraduk, the Russian city from which they came, where as a Jewish girl she would not even have been allowed to go to school.

Molly refuses to let her mother go to school to talk to her teacher, Miss Stickley, about the other children's behavior toward her because she is afraid Elizabeth will make fun of her mother's broken English and impoverished appearance.

However, she does let her mother, a seamstress, help with a homework assignment to make a Pilgrim doll for a model of the original Pilgrim settlement in Plymouth.

First Molly's mother must also learn about the tradition behind the Thanksgiving holiday so Molly repeated what she learned in class and Molly's mother seemed to understand.

But when she made a doll which looked just like a picture of herself as a girl, Molly is not so sure. Her mother explained she made the doll to reflect her own understanding of what a Pilgrim is.

"A Pilgrim is someone who came here from the other side to find freedom. That's me, Molly. I'm a Pilgrim!"

Certain her mother must be wrong, Molly nevertheless takes the doll to class to face the scrutiny of Miss Stickley and her classmates. Their reaction to the doll will determine not only whether the Winter Hill community is capable of tolerance for new ideas and compassion, but whether Molly's mother has convinced Molly to be proud of her heritage even though it is so much different from that of her classmates.

In Make a Wish, Molly, Molly faces a new dilemma stemming from her religious background. It is the spring of her third grade year at Winter Hill Elementary, and she has made a friend named Emma.

Unfortunately, sneering, taunting Elizabeth is always nearby to jealously guard her own friendship with Emma.

In this story, Molly is excited at the prospect of attending Emma's birthday party where she will get her first taste of birthday cake and give a birthday present for the first time. In Russia, she told Emma, birthdays were not celebrated with ice cream and cake and presents.

Molly's mother gives her permission to go to the party but dashes her hopes of eating any beautiful pink birthday cake, like one she coveted in the bakery window on her way home from school, because Emma's birthday falls during the Jewish holiday Passover, when Jews "can't eat cereal, or bread, or cake, unless it's specially made for the holiday."

When it is time for cake at Emma's party, Molly is tempted to disobey her mother, but her guilty conscience wins out. Instead of eating it with the other children, she cuts it into pieces and pushes it discreetly around her plate.

When other guests notice she has not eaten, ignorant Elizabeth seizes the moment as a new opportunity to demean Molly
"Jews won't eat in Christians' houses," she said. "My mother told me that. And she told me that if a Christian eats in a Jew's house, the Jew breaks the plates afterward and throws the silverware into the garbage."

Mortified Molly tries to deny Elizabeth's deliberate misunderstanding, but just as in Molly's Pilgrim, shame and uncertainty over her family traditions cause her to run away rather than stay and stand up for herself.

Molly's mother must come to the rescue by soothing Molly's hurt feelings and correcting Molly's friends' misinformation about Jewish traditions, using Molly's own birthday 11 days later to demonstrate real Jewish traditions for celebrating birthdays. Again she shows how her customs and beliefs can be integrated with American ideals and practices.

What makes Molly an engaging heroine is that, like Raggedy Anne, like us, she is not perfect. In each story the taunting third graders at Winter Hill succeed in making her feel awkward and strange among them. She becomes embarrassed by both her mother and her family's heritage, wanting to hide them so they cannot bring her more pain.

Through the intervention of her mother, not only are her classmates' eyes opened but hers are too. Positive reactions to her cultural traditions among the other children help reinforce their validity, allowing her to start believing in herself, her mother and the culture of which she is a product — to grow up a little.

She also wins our hearts by finding the inner-strength and tenacity to go back to school each day to try to take her place among her fellow students even though she is uncertain if her mother's intervention will help lessen their hostility toward her.

The stories are written at a third-grader's level. The themes may seem weighty for young minds, but as we all know, teasing is relentless on the school playground, so I am sure children will easily identify with Molly's predicaments.

Likewise, children can learn a great deal about both our cultural traditions and the less familiar ones introduced.

Each illustrator has used excellent black and white sketches to portray the Winter Hill community and the range of emotions Molly experiences, although Deraney's are sharper and more realistic than Jones'.

A film based on Molly's Pilgrim won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Subject in 1986.

But I think you will find Cohen's strong, authentic characterization and storytelling alone has brought Molly fully to life without any need of a doll or reenactment on the screen.

Kvasnicka was East Village Magazine news editor from 1985 to 1989 and has been the magazine's research consultant since 1989. She has a master's degree in information and library studies from the University of Michigan and has worked for the Genesee District Library since 1989.

• < Prev
• Next >