Tall Tales Told in Biblical Hebrew. By Ethelyn Simon, Irene Resnikoff, Linda Motzkin, Susan Noss. Oakland: EKS, 1994, 144 pp., $14.95 paper.
EKS Pubishing Company is a source of creative Hebrew learning tools, including flashcards, grammar books, charts, and so forth. In 1983, they released a volume entitled Tall Tales Told and Retold in Biblical Hebrew, a delightful little paperback in which widely known fairy tales such as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," "Cinderella," and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" were written in Biblical Hebrew style. Later, they incorporated this into their elementary grammar book, The First Hebrew Primer. Now they have released what is in essence a second edition of the first book of fairy tales (although this one makes no mention of the first edition). The listed authors are different, and several stories have been dropped and new ones added, but otherwise the two editions, including most of the stories, are very similar.
I have used the first edition for many years as a tension-reliever at different stress points during first-year Hebrew classes. It has been a fun, whimsical way for students to do sight-reading of familiar stories, written in the Hebrew conventions that they know. I have usually read the stories aloud to my classes, with all the intonations and drama I used with my pre-school children when I read them the English versions, and the classes have then had to translate on the spot. In both editions, the stories begin with easy vocabulary and syntax and become longer and more difficult as they go along. With nineteen stories in the new edition, there is plenty to pick and choose from, even for second-year classes. The new edition includes vocabulary lists, translations of all stories, and helpful teaching hints. While it is keyed throughout to EKS's First Hebrew Primer, it can be used with profit with any other Hebrew text, as well. I recommend it as a delightful change-of-pace in the teaching of Hebrew.
David M. Howard, Jr.
7/22/94
(This article originally appeared in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 38.2 (June 1995): 257.)