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Jewish Holidays All Year Round by Ilene Cooper. Illustrated by Elivia Savadier. Harry N. Abrams, 2002 (0-8109-0550-7) $18.95

I started out liking this book for its fresh and lively cover illustration of a multicultural Passover gathering, and I continued liking it for its fresh and lively text. The stories of the Jewish holidays have been retold so many times, it's a pleasure to hear them in a distinctive voice, as well as to see portrayals of less conventional Jewish families. In addition to the bright pen & ink and watercolor illustrations, the book also contains photographs of artwork from the Jewish Museum in New York City, offering many different expressions of Jewish life and art: four different menorahs, for example, range from a delicately wrought metal lamp from North Africa to a modern interpretation using eight small Statues of Liberty and the American flag.

The Jewish calendar has a number of holy days which are difficult to explain to children, like Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Rememberance Day. Jewish Holidays All Year Round includes those emotionally charged holidays, but its descriptions are pretty minimal (also a little confused: "six million Jews and other people died during the Holocaust"), leaving parents or teachers to decide how much of the story to tell. A short bibliography of Holocaust fiction for children and young adults is included.

The least successful portion of this book is the activities contained in each chapter: most are recipes requiring a lot of adult help, and the illustrations of items like an elaborate mechanized purim noisemaker from Russia will not satisfy children making groggers out of empty coffee cans.

Overall, this is an excellent resource for Jewish families; it's enjoyable to read, and the range of illustrations from the joyfully simple to the intriguingly sophisticated gives it visual appeal for a wide age range. (4-12)

Why should Poetry Friday have all the fun? Kidlitosphere-ers have been invited to make Mondays Nonfiction Mondays. I'm not really prepared, but I did do this short review for a bibliography recently, so I'll throw it into the pile




Kids Need to Be Safe by Julie Nelson. Illustrated by Mary
Gallagher. Free Spirit, 2006 (9778-1-456-4288-7)

This book intended for children in foster care keeps things simple and direct. "Foster parents take care of children when parents need help. Foster parents have a bed and food and toys for children. Foster parents keep kids safe. Kids are important. Kids need to be safe." The last two lines are repeated over and over throughout the book, a mantra child readers will hopefully take to heart. Without placing blame on parents--"sometimes moms and dads need to solve big problems"--the book briefly describes some of the reasons kids might need to be in foster care, and some of the difficult feelings they might have about it, but keeps its focus on that message: "Kids are important. Kids need to be safe." The general tone will make this a good springboard for discussions; it might also be helpful for kids who have friends in foster care as well. I only wish it had included some advice for children who still feel threatened in their foster homes. (4-10)

Rebecca OUP-US

Hanna Diamond, author of Fleeing Hitler: France 1940, is Senior Lecturer in French History at the University of Bath. She lived and taught in Paris for many years and has spent her career researching the lives of the French people during the twentieth century. Fleeing Hitler shows how the mass exodus from Paris was a defining moment in the war for the French. In the original piece below Diamond reflects upon how difficult it was to get into the French psyche.

When I was approached by OUP to write a book on the exodus in France I had already read Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise and I jumped at the chance. Aware that official archives, police reports and other documents drawn up by officials were not likely to be available since most had left their posts along with the rest of the population, oral history seemed an ideal way of reaching this experience. (more…)

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