Joseph Had a Little Overcoat

Joseph, a Jewish farmer, owns an overcoat that grows old and worn, and rather than throw it away he keeps cutting it down into something smaller and still useful: a jacket, then a vest, then a scarf, a necktie, a handkerchief, and finally a single button. Each transformation is shown through a die cut hole that lets the reader glimpse the next object peeking through from the following page before turning it, and when Joseph eventually loses the button too, he appears to have nothing left, until the last page reveals that he has made a book out of the whole story instead, proving, as the refrain puts it, that you can always make something out of nothing.

Simms Taback builds the pages from bold, folk art influenced mixed media, watercolor and collage among them, and pattern rooted in Eastern European Jewish village life, framing each spread with decorative borders, background details, and small visual jokes, a wedding, a rooster, a fiddler, that reward searching the page as much as following Joseph's coat itself. The recurring die cut holes turn every page turn into a small reveal, part of the book's physical design rather than an incidental decoration on top of it.

Short, rhythmic, and genuinely funny, the book suits three to seven year olds well, and its die cuts make it a natural for a child to hold and predict from, guessing at a peeking shape before the next page fully reveals it. The refrain repeats with each shrinking object, giving very young listeners a rhythm to anticipate and eventually chant along with well before they can read the words on the page themselves.