Jane Yolen tri­umphs once again in this touch­ing tale of a girl’s search for edu­ca­tion, knowl­edge, equal­i­ty, and enlight­en­ment. In a small Jew­ish town in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Rus­sia, girls were not giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn to read. They were encour­aged to be sat­is­fied with a home-based life of cook­ing, sewing, serv­ing, and all the oth­er skills required for keep­ing house. But Rochel-Leah want­ed more. She want­ed to learn to read, because only through the writ­ten word could an indi­vid­ual stretch beyond the con­fines of her dai­ly life and begin to see the larg­er world.

Rochel-Leah approached each of her fam­i­ly mem­bers, but none of them were able to help. Her moth­er might’ve liked to help her, but she couldn’t read, either. Her broth­ers tried to teach her before rapid­ly run­ning out of patience. Her father didn’t under­stand why girls have to read at all. But Rochel-Leah was deter­mined. As a last resort, she approached the rab­bi, who was not enthu­si­as­tic, but from their con­ver­sa­tion she got an idea. She hid beneath an open win­dow at the boys’ ched­er and lis­tened care­ful­ly to the les­son. When the rab­bi dis­cov­ered the lengths to which she had gone in her quest for learn­ing, he told her that if she could hide from the inspec­tor who would report them to the author­i­ties if they were caught, he would teach her along with the boys. And this is the way that Rochel-Leah final­ly learned how to read.

Read­ers will get a glimpse of a time and place when edu­ca­tion was denied to many, when only a priv­i­leged few were allowed into the secret world of learn­ing. They will admire the grit and deter­mi­na­tion of a rare soul who would not take no for an answer when her desire was so strong. They’ll begin to appre­ci­ate and val­ue the oppor­tu­ni­ties they enjoy today and the rewards that come from ris­ing above challenges.

In an after­word, Yolen explains that the tale of Rochel-Leah is based on a fam­i­ly sto­ry. She also includes a glos­sary of Yid­dish and Yiddish/​Hebrew words. Fel­ishia Henditirto’s col­or illus­tra­tions are love­ly, evok­ing both Rochel-Leah’s dis­tress when she is denied oppor­tu­ni­ties and her pal­pa­ble joy when her dreams final­ly come true.