MAZEL AND SHLIMAZEL

Translated from the Yiddish, this is an award-winning children's story by a Nobel laureate. Humorous, wise and touching, it recounts a bet over a peasant boy between the spirits of good and bad luck--Mazel and Shlimazel. The ironic parallel with the bet between God and the Evil One in the story of Job strikes the adult listener immediately. Children will appreciate the ironic variation on traditional märchen. Presumably to emphasize the universality of the story, narrator Guidall avoids the cadences that Yiddish speakers have brought to English; he intuitively picks up the spirit of the story, giving it the light "child-man" quality present in many of Singer's writings. Y.R. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: MAR 97]