Chil­dren’s

Four in One! Four Favorites

Yaf­fa Ganz; Har­vey Kline­man, illus.
  • Review
By – January 16, 2012
Four In One! is a col­lec­tion of four pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished Ganz books, includ­ing The Gift That Grew; Yedidya and the Esrog Tree; Me and My Bub­by, My Zei­dy and Me; and Teasers, Twisters, Stumpers a book­ful of tricky Torah-rid­dles. The three sto­ries use com­mon Hebrew and Yid­dish vocab­u­lary, such as Shab­bos, Abba, and shul. Each sto­ry also teach­es its own les­son, hon­or­ing your elders, car­ing for the envi­ron­ment and patience and gen­eros­i­ty. All of the sto­ries are illus­trat­ed by the same artist, adding famil­iar­i­ty to the series. They are sim­ply, bright­ly illus­trat­ed, with just enough detail to make each sto­ry pos­si­ble to take place in your own home. Chil­dren from more tra­di­tion­al, reli­gious homes will be com­fort­able read­ing this book, and any adult with a Juda­ic back­ground can help explain some of the ter­mi­nol­o­gy to a less-obser­vant child. The sto­ries hold up in either instance. Teasers, Twisters and Stumpers is divid­ed into three sec­tions, based on dif­fi­cul­ty. The rid­dles them­selves are not age-appro­pri­ate for younger chil­dren and the con­tent is clear­ly geared towards chil­dren with a strong Juda­ic edu­ca­tion. Top­ics range from Torah sto­ries, to hol­i­days to rit­u­al objects. This col­lec­tion is one that an ele­men­tary- aged child can use through­out their school years, for fun and a lit­tle learn­ing along the way. Ages 5 – 12.
Rachel Ros­ner is the Direc­tor of the Jew­ish Book Fes­ti­val in Rochester, NY. She also runs Jew­ish Fam­i­ly Pro­grams for the JCC, and has worked there since 1994. She holds a degree in Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion from Syra­cuse University.

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