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Dare to Dress: Cross-Dressing and Intercultural Shifts within an Israeli Literary Children's Closet
- Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 60, Number 4, 2022
- pp. 28-37
- 10.1353/bkb.2022.0057
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
This article suggests a new cultural reading of children's clothing in children's literature through a 2021 Hebrew picturebook, Swirl Dress (Ĺšimlah mi[inline-graphic 33]ovevet; [inline-graphic 02]), written by Meira Firon and illustrated by Tamar Lev. Although this is a contemporary Israeli book, it deals with universal values such as accepting the "other," whether depicted in terms of skin color or gender identity. The story is analyzed from a cross-cultural perspective that connects it to an older poem, also with a clothing item: Kadia Molodowsky's Yiddish canonical poem "The Life of a Coat" ("Gilgulav shel Me'il"; "[inline-graphic 03]"), which was translated and adapted into Hebrew several times throughout the last century.