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New spins on Hanukkah stories
REVIEWS BY JOANNA BRICHETTO Merry Hanukkah? The yearly tension felt by some who negotiate Hanukkah amid the Christmas season gets an ironic twist in several new books. Given the diversity of even single-faith families, this may not be a surprising move. Whether trend or coincidence, it means more books for children, which is always a happy result.
Codell folds Dickens' universal themes of social justice, class and belonging into a particular place and time of Jewish history. Scroogemacher is a merciless factory owner on New York's Lower East Side until, courtesy of three visitors—the Rabbis of Hanukkah Past, Present and Future—he learns how to be a real mensch (human being). Along the way, readers witness the rededication of the Holy Temple in Maccabean times (the event Hanukkah commemorates), a perilous transatlantic journey to Ellis Island, and the eventual good life in the Golden Land (present-day America), created from the hard work and labor reforms of immigrants who kept alive Old World traditions in a New World. Readers unfamiliar with Yiddish terms will find the glossary invaluable, and two bibliographies (one for kids, one for adults) point to resources on the Jewish immigrant experience and Jewish history in general. Illustrations pepper at least every other page, keeping visual interest throughout a fairly long story, and the artist's conception of the Rabbi of Hanukkah Future (a wise woman with reading glasses) is not to be missed.
By Esmé Raji Codell Hyperion, $16.99 58 pages ISBN 0786851791 Latkes galore
By Lesléa Newman Abrams, $12.95 24 pages ISBN 081095785X Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel Four Sides, Eight Nights: A New Spin on Hanukkah, by Rebecca Tova Ben-Zvi, lives up to its subtitle. This new spin on Hanukkah is child-friendly, fun and educational: a rare mix. It is a dense little book that reads as light as my latkes should be. Facts galore—about history, religion, trivia, science, food and customs—are organized in manageable bites, including marginalia with fascinating tidbits. Charming, detailed pencil drawings invite young readers to actually read the thing, and young listeners to ask what it says.
The chapters on dreidels illustrate the depth of the whole book. We don't just get the rules of the game, we get ancient origins (sheep knucklebones as dice); games using tops from Greek, Roman, Japanese, French, Korean and English traditions; a list of "top" fun gaming units for playing dreidel (chocolate kisses, etc.); and an introduction to friction, inertia, tangential points and speed as they relate to the art and science of dreidel. (By the way, the average dreidel speed is 3,300 revolutions per minute.) I haven't even mentioned the molten lead, elephants and "very dangerous cheese," but you can read about these factoids before wrapping this book to give to your favorite kid, parent, grandparent or teacher.
By Rebecca Tova Ben-Zvi Roaring Book, $16.95 48 pages ISBN 1596430591 Joanna Brichetto negotiates Hanukkah and all Jewish holidays as a graduate student in Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University.
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"Old man Scroogemacher was as sour as a pickle and had a tongue like horse-radish." The first sentence of Hanukkah, Shmanukkah! gives a forshpice (appetizer) of the Yiddish flavors that follow—a hint that Dickens' A Christmas Carol has undergone a religious and cultural conversion. Yes, the most unloved character in the most beloved Christmas story has been appropriated for the other big holiday in December. As odd as it may seem, author Esmé Raji Codell pulls off the switcheroo with humor, history and heart.
The Eight Nights of Chanukah, by Lesléa Newman, is a brief, colorful picture book that transposes another Christmas tradition to a Jewish key. Sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," the new words enumerate all the accompaniments of Hanukkah: "seven latkes frying, six dreidels spinning, five bags of gelt, four matzoh balls" and so forth. Young children will enjoy pointing to and counting each item embedded in the cozy pictures by award-winning artist Elivia Savadier. She provides long-overdue scenes of religious Jewish life showing multigenerational families with a spectrum of hair and skin colors.
The author goes beyond Maccabees and grandma's latkes (although no Hanukkah book would be complete without these two pillars of identity) and gets practical with "Eight Hanukkah Dos and Don'ts"; creative with ideas for homemade dreidels and gifts; scientific with probability and physics; and historical with yes, the Maccabees, but also with the stories behind "the" dreidel song and the Hanukkah custom of eating dairy foods.