The box of can­dles is a device to mark time. While the can­dles give light from Shab­bat to Shab­bat and Jew­ish hol­i­day to hol­i­day, a roman­tic sto­ry unfolds. The romance is a bit far from the purview of most pic­ture book read­ers because it involves the remar­riage of a grand­moth­er, an expe­ri­ence most read­ers will not face, how­ev­er, it includes a range of emo­tions from dis­like and jeal­ousy (the new man means less atten­tion from grand­ma) to accep­tance (he does spe­cial things for the grand­daugh­ter) to love (she grows to love him for her­self and because he makes her beloved grand­moth­er hap­py). Ruthie receives the can­dles from Grand­ma Gussie on her sev­enth birth­day. She accepts the gift with thanks and the clear, fore­shad­ow­ing com­ment that she does not like change. The plot unfolds dur­ing the year until her next birth­day, marked by tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish hol­i­days. The boyfriend, Mr. Adler, appears at the very start of the book, thus, read­ers first meet Ruthie as a petu­lant and sad lit­tle girl. Her moods change as the book, divid­ed into chap­ters, moves chrono­log­i­cal­ly. By sum­mer, Ruthie’s emo­tion­al chill thaws. By fall, she throws away her bad thoughts of him at Tash­lich. By win­ter, she miss­es Mr. Adler when he is gone, and by spring, she wants her grand­moth­er to mar­ry him. Each peri­od of time nat­u­ral­ly incor­po­rates infor­ma­tion about Jew­ish cel­e­bra­tions and cus­toms at an age appro­pri­ate lev­el. Full page illus­tra­tions in mut­ed pas­tels echo the soft­ness of the plot. Most of the pic­tures ref­er­ence Jew­ish hol­i­days. This sweet, slow­ly paced sto­ry will appeal to lit­tle girls aged five and six. Glos­sary of Jew­ish terms.