Buba Leah and Her Paper Children by Lillian Hammer Ross



A warning up front: this book made me cry!  Lillian Hammer Ross captures the mixture of sadness and joy that is felt by families separated by immigration.  Buba Leah's children have moved to America, leaving her with paper children: the letters they send her from America.  She keeps them in a special box and shares them with the daughter of her neighbors, Chava.  One afternoon, the postman delivers a special letter to Buba Leah.  Enclosed in the envelope are two tickets for passage to America: one for Buba Leah and one for Chava.  Chava must leave her parents behind in Russia and become a paper child herself in order to have a better life.  The illustrations by  Mary Morgan help convey the emotion of the story, drawn in the characters' faces.

Some ideas for the ESL classroom:

• Using the illustrations, discuss past and present
• Discussion of students' own family members left behind in their home country
• Making predictions: What are the paper children?  What is in the special letter of Buba Leah?  Will Chava leave her parents to go to America?
• Character development: What kind of person is Buba Leah?  How do we know that?  What does the author tell us about her?
• Vocabulary that may be tricky for ELL's: porch, linen, challah, Sabbath, frightened, wondered, snuggled, wagon, blossom, tickets, mingled, journey, mazel tov

Exploring the form and function of friendly letters would be a great writing activity to go along with this book.  Students could learn the format and then write letters to family members.  For emerging writers, help students write a letter as a class on chart paper, maybe to the school principal or librarian, for example. 

Keep in mind, this topic may make students sad, but that's no reason to avoid it.  The ESL classroom may be the only place in school that your students feel comfortable talking about loved ones that they miss back in their home countries.  Encourage children to share as much as they would like.  You might be surprised at how close you will grow to them! 

Happy reading!

Jacquie