Children’s literature was a thriving subset of Yiddish publishing. Many major Yiddish writers tried their hands at children’s stories, as well as translating classic works by Hans Christian Andersen, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, among others. The Yiddish school movement produced primers, anthologies, abridged editions of classic Yiddish novels, and new works for children by leading Yiddish writers and educators. Many of the books were beautifully illustrated by important artists including Nota Koslowsky, Aaron Goodelman, and Zuni Maud.
The Noah Cotsen Library of Yiddish Children’s Literature includes about 800 titles, most of which are quite rare. The annotated list below describes their content and reading level. Most of the books were scanned from microfiche held by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, supplemented by titles at the Yiddish Book Center. For every title that was successfully digitized, we provide a link to the full text in our . Because of flaws in some of the microfiche, not all the books on the list could be successfully digitized, but the annotations will still be useful to researchers.
