Reviewed by Jocelyn Langer - Music and Spanish Teacher at the Village School in Royalston, MA www.VillageSchool.to
Like any traditional tale, the story I Had an Old Coat has taken on many different variations over the years. The story of the coat and its resourceful owner has been adapted into song lyrics, as well as a Caldecott Medal winning picture book, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback.
Children at the Village School sing I Had an Old Coat every year as part of the school’s strong musical tradition. While September brings songs of harvest and falling leaves, and springtime tunes sing of maple sugaring and sheep shearing, the bleak winter months in the middle of the school year offer fewer seasonal songs, leaving room for favorites that are both fun and philosophical. I Had an Old Coat includes both of those characteristics: it has a fun, repetitive refrain, “I had an old coat and the coat got torn, what’ll I do? what’ll I do?”, and a message of resourcefulness, “…so I cut it down and a jacket was born, and I sing every day of my life.”
The award winning illustrations of Simms Taback’s picture book capture the depth, tradition and varied texture of the song beautifully. Taback’s own warm, colorful drawings, combined with cutouts of photographs and fabric, create charming collages with echoes of a folk art style.
Both the book and song outline a similar sequence of events, in which an old coat becomes so worn that its owner makes it into a jacket, the jacket’s sleeves wear out and it becomes a vest, the vest becomes stained and is cut into a tie, the tie becomes a patch, which is then made into a button. Eventually the man is left with next to nothing. In the song, the final verse says, “When that button was almost gone, with what was left I made this song, and I sing every day of my life.”
Simms Taback gives the story a slightly different conclusion in his book, with a clear moral in the end: “…Now he had nothing. So Joseph made a book about it. Which shows you can always make something out of nothing.”
The story of the old overcoat is fun for children ages 3-6, because the recurring chorus of the song and the predictable pattern of the story’s text fulfill a young child’s fascination with repetition. For older children ages 7-12, this story is a perfect stepping off point to discuss reusing, recycling and innovation. These concepts could easily be developed into the basis for an environmental science project, or Taback’s rich illustrations could lay the foundation for a multi-media art project.
While the history of Joseph’s little overcoat has roots in Yiddish culture, the concept of reusing precious resources speaks powerfully to the choices facing young people in today’s consumer society. Culture and future aside, however, Taback’s book holds its own as pure, fun childhood entertainment, embellished with die-cut pages that allow readers a glimpse into the colors of the previous page as each new item of clothing takes shape.
