![]() But on the fourth night of Hanukkah, they both gave tzedakah to help repair the world.” The end result is that you learn a lot about each night of Hanukkah, but not in a way that feels teachy. To settle things once and for all, they have a competition: Who can have the world’s best Hanukkah? Weissman then proceeds to do this clever little pairing of each activity that Nora or Noah does that’s different on each of the eight days, but in the end they both always end up doing the same thing. They talk on the phone all the time but they also find one another’s Hanukkah experiences to be utterly backwards. In this story you have cousins Nora, living in New Zealand, and Noah, living in New York. My sole regret is that I encountered it as late in the year as I did. With apologies to all the other Hanukkah books out this year, behold my absolute favorite!! It is rare for me to put a holiday book on both my Holidays list and my Best Picture Books list of the year, but that’s just how good this little book by Weissman and Hoffmann is. ![]() Probably, and I mean this truly, the best Yom Kippur picture book I’ve ever seen. And while I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline and the art (which is top notch!) I really enjoyed the fact that having given up free meals throughout the book, the wolf gets to feast and feast at the story’s end. The book centers on a Big Bad who follows the Jewish tradition of t’shuvah, returning to his best self on Yom Kippur. And for good reason too! The story focuses on a Big Bad Wolf, not too dissimilar from the one you’ve seen in the book series/movie Bad Guys. I actually spotted this cover across a distance of at least ten feet and was instantly drawn in. And Apples & Honey Press did not disappoint. Now as I was traversing the halls of the Annual American Library Association Conference this past June I made a point to sniff out all the smaller publishers of children’s books to see what goodies they might have to display. In the pantheon of great Yom Kippur picture books, few feature wolves in sleeveless plaid. Ideal for the kid who wants something scary/not scary for the season. And yes, you guessed it, the one who gets the handkerchief is most definitely the mouse (but not, to my surprise, by scaring her). When a mouse challenges the baddies to get the handkerchief of a young woman who’s just moved into the proverbial neighborhood, the race is on! Trouble is, this is a Donaldson/Scheffler heroine of a particularly calm and collected disposition. A witch, a ghost, and a troll compete between themselves to be the scariest (a plot not wholly different from another 2023 title, Benita and the Night Creatures by Mariana Llanos). This actually would a rather nice Halloween storytime title, if you were so inclined to include it. Now is this book up to Gruffalo standards? Since I’m not a #1 Gruffalo fan, my answer would most certainly be yes. It was the shock of my lifetime to travel to the Bologna Book Fair this past March and discover that Axel Scheffler is, in fact, German. Hey, The Gruffalo isn’t a worldwide sensation for nothin’, after all.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |