Born on May 20, 1949, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Sheldon grew up in an immigrant neighbourhood in the city's north end. "My parents were store owners on Main Street and I wrote about two blocks of that world in my collection of adult short stories, This business with Elijah. It was a wonderful neighbourhood, tough but full of life. Growing up, I really didn't have much expectation of anything except not being a storekeeper. Going on to university was really all I thought about. Being an only child and living on Main Street where there weren't a lot of children, I tended towards being a daydreamer. There weren't books around the house, but my parents made sure they took me to the library. Becoming a writer was really something that was no more and no less a fantasy than a dozen others I had as a child.
"I worked in the summers and put myself through university - door-to- door sales, as a mover; soda jerk, an usher in the neighbourhood theatre and on the trains as a porter. All these jobs gave me a chance to really meet people. I went to the University of Winnipeg where I did a B.A. in English. After my third year; I went bumming around Europe and North Africa. I went to Israel to work on a kibbutz as part of the adventure. I liked being there and found I could get a scholarship to the University of Jerusalem. I spent a year in an M.A. program and then came back to the University of Manitoba and got a B. Ed. in 1974."
After a year of teaching in Altona, Manitoba, Sheldon returned to Winnipeg where "I've been teaching at the same school, Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate, ever since." Sheldon's writing efforts initially had to be fitted around his educator's role. "I wrote on weekends, holidays, whenever I could. When I could save up enough money, I'd take ayear off from teaching to concentrate on writing. I did that three times before deciding to work just three-quarter time. I've written eight books and financially, I'm able to take more time off. Presently I'm working about half time and writing half time. I want to keep teaching because I find it more interesting than staying in my own thoughts all day long. Teaching keeps me connected to the world in a certain kind of way."
While Sheldon didn't particularly aspire to be an author as a child, he did live in a world of "story ". "My parents knew how to tell a story in an enjoyable way. We'd sit at the kitchen table after work and we'd just share the day. I didn't have a lot of friends, but later on when I started making friends, one thing that I could offer was an ability to speak. I was always elected class president because I could speak for my classmates and get them out of trouble. By the time I was in junior high, I'd go for a walk every night for about an hour. Sometimes I'd see people, but most of the time it would just be with my thoughts. After school, I would also have about an hour to myself when I'd do my chores. Both those times were times of introspection, times where I could just think, be comfortable with myself and develop whatever thoughts were in my mind. By the end of high school I was keeping a kind of a diary of my thoughts. Aside from the journal and the odd song, writing didn't really occur until after university. I didn't take courses in writing.
"It was only when I was a parent and a teacher that I started telling stories to my children and writing things down. I also took a train ride to Toronto where I was alone for a day and three-quarters. During that time, I spontaneously wrote my first story which became the basis of This business with Elijah, a book which has now been added to Manitoba's high school curriculum along with a teacher's guide I prepared." Sheldon's introduction to children's writing came, in part, through his friendship with Fred Penner. "We were in theatre together and Fred was just coming out as a singer for children. He was performing somewhere and to encourage him, I came out with my children. I'd written this thing called John Russell Watkins, a story about a boy who wasn't afraid of a witch, a troll and a ghost that try to frighten him. They all became quite frustrated and start crying. I gave it to Fred. About six months later, he phoned to say he's making a record and 'Could he put it on the record?' 'Well, sure." And things moved from there. I think I've given him eight or nine songs now. They started off as stories and then I figured out how to make them into songs. Julie Gerond and the Polka Dot Pony, a story in rhyme, was about the third piece that I wrote. Fred put it in the record and later it became my first children's book. "
In reflecting on the period of time it took for his second book, The lion in the lake, to be published, Sheldon says, "It was probably good that it happened that way. I do like to take a long time with stories. I've been working on my next book, which is about the childhood of an Inuit artist, Simon Tookoome, for about eight years. The always prayer shawl was five years from the point that I got the idea until it was published. During that time it wasn't just sitting; it was developing. After Always Boyds Mills wanted me to write another Jewish story and I think it's finally ready. I've been working on it for about two years. For me, that's a real rush job even though it involved more than fifty drafts where I would sit down for a couple of hours's and look at it and then leave it for a week. Now the story's finally at the point where I think I can read it to people. When I can memorize it in a natural way and perform it comfortably, then I'sll know it's solid.
"The lion in the lake came out of a kind of frustration. My children were in French immersion school and I wanted to do something for them. I'd written another alphabet book which I thought was brilliant and the manuscript is still brilliantly sitting on a shelf. I was very ambitious and excited about this manuscript and actually went to New York0 I had a letter of introduction from another publisher and through this letter, actually got allowed to face the publisher with my manuscript. What a crazy thing! People don'st do that. You mail it off. You never see any of these people." By the time Sheldon left New York however he believed the manuscript had been accepted.
"Very excited, I came home with a bottle of champagne, but the letter of rejection beat me home. 'Marketing decided they don't need another alphabet book? I'd been working on The Lion in the Lake for a number of years, had taken it to other publishers, but then one day after the New York trip I just decided spontaneously to phone a local publisher in Winnipeg I'd learned about. I called and said, 'My name is Sheldon Oberman.' And she replied, 'Oh, I know you. I've got your manuscript on my desk! It was a short story that had been accepted for a Manitoba Education publication for schools and Mary Dixon, the publisher; just happened to be editing it when I phoned. 'Oh, you have an alphabet book. Well, we hadn't really thought about that, but come on down.'
"Julie Gerond and the polka dot pony happened because I was sitting on my front porch watching a neighbourhood girl with beautiful hair playing with my children. She was pretending to ride up and down on a pony and I was imagining her on a merry-go-round. It then became a story about a girl who loved the merry-go-round, and a particular wooden pony on it and how she later discovered that the pony was bewitched.
"I wrote TV Sal and the Game Show from Outer Space for my daughter, Mira, when she was about 13, just to tease her because she was rea}ly addicted to the TV set. I wrote it as a story about a girl who's watching so much TV. Space aliens crash land, take over her television set and all sorts of ridiculous things happen. It becomes a kind of Alice in Wonderland story as she gets sucked into the TV and into this weird world of a game show where she wins a universal channel changer that lets her go on any television show in the universe. The story tries to deal in a very funny way with the craziness of television without becoming moral about it's something which never works with kids anyway.
"The always prayer shawl is perhaps the most tender for me. When my son Adam was turning 13, he was going to have a Bar Mitzvah and I found my grandfather's prayer shawl which he had given to me as a child. He had passed away and that shawl had been my inheritance from him. I'd never worn it, but then suddenly finding it as I was preparing for my son's Bar Mitzvah, I remembered my grandfather. I wished he could be part of this event I told my son the story of my grandfather and how he came over to Canada and what the shawl meant to him. Telling the story was very important for it brought my grandfather into the ceremony. It also allowed me to feel I was connected to my grandfather and I realized how important that shawl was. It became a story that I told otherss and it grew and grew for years until it finally took on the form of a book. Lots of nice things have happened with the book including its being in PBS's 'Reading Rainbow', and its winning the 1994 National Jewish Book Award and the Sydney Thylor American Librarians Award. It's also been included on several 'Best Books' lists. The book's given me a lot of recognition so I could keep writing.
"I feel The Always Prayer Shawl is very Canadian. However, no matter where I go in Canada and the United States, everyone is convinced it's their city that the book is describing. I made a deal with Ted Lewin,the artist, that he was not to indicate anything American in it because I didn't want it, through the illustrations, to exclude my grandfather's experience." Sheldon also suggested to Lewin that he consider working from family photographs, and Lewin was most receptive to the idea. "The kind of work Lewin does, he does out of very meticulous research. I took hundreds of family photos, had them photocopied on a good quality machine and mailed them off. Lewin requested that I model the prayer shawl, which I did at my local synagogue and he asked for the shawl which I sent him. I was surprised to see myself on that first full-colour page. The young Adam looks very much like my son, and although Lewin says he used a model, I think he used Adam face."
The always prayer shawl was transformed into a one-hour family play and Sheldon was commissioned to write the script. The play also had another special meaning for Sheldon. "My father was ill and I realized he was dying. The play was the last event he attended. I sat there at the play with my father on one side, my son on the other. The backdrop was a curtain of family photos which had been painted on the canvass - there was him, there was me, his grandson, his father. It was very important that this was a last gift that we could share. He was deeply gratified by that experience and it was a wonderful family experience to have.
"The white stone in the castle wall has an interesting story behind it. I was visiting friends in Toronto who lived near Casa Loma. I took a tour of Casa Loma and one of the guide's 'side bars' was about the wall which was built in 1914 around Casa Loma. Sir Henry Pellatt, who owned Toronto's electric street car and telephone companies decided in the fashion of the rich and powerful of the time, to give a generous gift to the people. To everyone who brought up a stone which could be used in the wall, Sir Henry would pay a dollar. In those days that was a full day's wage for a 10 hour working day. He bought 250,000 of them. I continued 'visiting' Casa Loma just by jogging by it. It struck me one day as I ran around the building's perimeter, that all of the stones were dull coloured red, brown black and grey stones except for this one white stone a big shiny kind of granite quartz.
"I wondered why Sir Henry only took the one and if there was a story behind it. That's what got me going, a 'what if situation and so I wrote a story of a Scottish immigrant boy, John Tommy Fiddich, who had a stone he wanted to bring and the adventures, disappointments and frustrations he experienced until he finally managed to get it into the wall. I also tell how Sir Henry might have been involved. Every piece of Tait's art from the book was bought by a patron who donated it to Casa Loma. There's now a room just for those illustrations, and so, when people from all over the world take the tour they'll see that story, panel by panel. We've also created a kind of walking tour out of the book because every building that is shown in the illustrations is still in Toronto.
"The white stone's become a kind of new legend of Toronto. Suddenly people can't drive by Casa Loma without seeing that white stone. So a fiction becomes a legend". Fiction and reality, Sheldon explains, became linked in another way. "I'd been thinking about the story for about three years below writing the first draft. I was again staying at a friend's house in Toronto when a little 4-year- old boy, Sam Peden, came with his father to visit. Sam was carrying this big white stone, the same kind as in my story. 'Where did you get that?' I asked. He had been in the woods with his dad, saw this stone, and said, 'Can I take it?' 'If you want to carry it, you can,' was his father's response. And so this little boy actually carried it out of the woods. It was such a coincidence and Sam was acting so much in his heart like John Thmmy Fiddich that I dedicated the book to him. At the book launch four years later, Sam showed up and gave me the stone. Like Sir Henry, I gave him a silver dollar. I use the stone when I tell the story. It's one heavy prop!"
As noted earlier, Sheldon presently has another manuscript with Boyds Mills. "I haven't signed the contract, but they're looking for an illustrator. Right now, it's called Zaida remembers Hanukkah. On the surface it sounds like a sentimental story, Zaida, being a grandfather, remembering Hanukkah; but something happened when I was writing it. Although the grandfather tells the Hanukkah story, which was the miracle of the lamp with only enough oil for one day, but it burns for eight days, the story that Zaida tells after that is how he was in Nazi-occupied Europe as a child and was not able to celebrate Hanukkah and had to leave his lamp behind.
"Hanukkah is very much connected to the Holocaust although people don't consciously connect it because it's supposed to be a happy holiday and you only remember the miracle moment. However, behind that miracle was a time of terrible suffering, and so Zaida tells two stories to his grandchildren, one of Hanukkah, that original time of suffering and miracle, and the other, his Hanukkah as a child. He escapes from Europe, comes back as a soldier and fights like a Maccabee to restore not just the Jewish people, but the world. It was a time where all civilization was at stake, not just one culture. We don't remember that because we're so anti-war now. We want to forget that sometimes one has to fight to defend what one believes in, to defend one's culture. I don't know how popular this book will be. We can talk about fighting at Hanukkah and see all these guys with spears in biblical times. It doesn't mean anything, but boy, you put it into the context of this century, and there's a shock. It was also a time of miracle and redemption, admittedly not so much for the Jews because so few of them were saved. But for this one man who goes back to his home which was destroyed and who rediscovers his lamp in the ashes, cleans and polishes it and is able to put it in his window again without being afraid, there is still that miracle of redemption."
In looking at where he is as a writer today, Sheldon says, "The writing became successful enough that about six years ago I rented a downtown studio. I try to get to it about four afternoons a week and on Sunday. That's my time there and it's just precious. Almost every time I go to the studio, there are three things I do besides writing. I have a nice cup of coffee and a muffin I've bought at a donut shop, I read and I take a nap. When I wake up, I generally start by writing in my journal and when that's done, I'll move into whatever story I'm working on. I have a hundred story files, and I'll dip into different ones according to the mood I'm in or what's pressing at the time. That's what I'll do in an afternoon between about 1 o'clock and 5:30. While I have an office in my home, it contains 'dangerous things', like the telephone and the fridge which calls to me from floors away. It's easy to get distracted and that's really been a battle all my life. You can keep yourself very busy without getting anything important done. I needed to create an environment of isolation."
Sheldon can certainly be described as someone who is creatively multi- talented. He's written songs, film, radio and theatre scripts, directed films, been an actor and he even created the questions for "The Junior Version of a Question of Scruples". "I don't know how other people are; I only know how I am and creativity will just find its way out. When you want to do something creative, it doesn't really matter what the form is. It only matters that, whatever you're doing you're trying to do it in a creative, interesting way. Whether it's a book, a song, a film or a play, it's telling a story. Even working with my hands and shaping a collage is creating something that tells a story, a silent one. I think I'm led through all of these areas by peoples' responses. If everybody said, 'You've got to keep writing plays,' I would keep writing plays. It's not a money thing. It's simply a matter of doing what people are excited about and right now, children's writing is the form.'
A further talent for Sheldon is being a storyteller. "Recently, I've been telling my own traditional Jewish stories, ancient mystical and magical stories, folklore." His books are also included in his storytelling repertoire. "With TV Sal, because it's a media thing, I use a microphone and slides. The slides come on and I do sound effects over the microphone. It's absolutely assaultive, very extreme and wild, a very different kind of performance. I do The prayer shawl with my prayer shawl. Because Fred Penner 'speaks' Julie Gerond on one of his records and has the beautiful music of the Winnipeg Symphony behind him and sound effects, I never tell Julie. How can I compete?"
"Though I've been working as a writer since those first stories 18 years ago, it's only in the last four years where I really feel that I can say to people, 'Yes, I'm a writer and a teacher. That's what I am,' and have it be an absolutely solid statement. Before that, it was, 'Yes, I do a little writing, but no, not books you would know.' It's a great thing to be a writer. It may not be the last thing I am. There may be other ways of going, but I'm really having a good time with it".
Books by Sheldon Oberman
The a1ways prayer shawl. Illustrated by Ted Lewin. Boyds Mills, 1994. 1-878093-22-3. PreS-Grade 4.
Julie Gerond and the polka dot pony. Set to music by Fred Penner. Illustrated by Alan Pakarnyk. Hyperion, 1988. Preschool-Grade 2.
The lion in the lake/le lion dans le lac. Illustrated by Scott Barham. Peguis, 1988. 0-920541-36-4. Preschool-Grade 2.
This business with Elijah. Turnstone, 1993. 0-88801-174-1. Grades 10 up.
TV Sal and the game show from outer space. Illustrated by Craig Terlson. Red Deer College, 1993. 0-88995-093-8. PreS-Grade 2.
The white stone in the castle wall. Illustrated by Les Tait. PreS-Grade 3.