Chil­dren’s

Ben­ny the Big Shot

Tehilla Deutch; Vital­i­ty Roma­nenko, illus.

  • Review
By – September 1, 2011

When Ben­ny arrives in T’zvi’s class, every­one thinks he’s a pret­ty nice kid. But Ben­ny is smart, too smart. Every time the Reb­bi asks the class a ques­tion, Ben­ny has the right answer. His class work and home­work are always the best, his grade, the high­est. T’zvi’s envy grows like an angry mon­ster inside his chest. He nick­names this new arrival Big Shot Ben­ny” and vows to find a way to be bet­ter than he is. The Reb­bi pro­vides the class with the ulti­mate chal­lenge. The big Chu­mash test is in a week, and the Reb­bi is giv­ing away two tick­ets to the great­est amuse­ment part in town. The tick­ets will go to the boy who earns the top score on the test. T’zvi is sure he can study hard enough to beat Ben­ny. But Ben­ny earns the high­est score and T’zvi is dev­as­tat­ed. But guess who Ben­ny wants to take to the amuse­ment park? Author Tehilla Deutsch tells T’zvi’s sto­ry total­ly in rhyme. Par­ents will appre­ci­ate the mes­sage about what jeal­ousy can do if allowed to grow untamed. 

Mar­cia Ber­neger is a retired teacher who lives with her hus­band and three crazy dogs. She taught both first and sec­ond grade, as well as spe­cial edu­ca­tion. She cur­rent­ly teach­es Torah school, in addi­tion to her vol­un­teer work in class­rooms, libraries, and with var­i­ous fundrais­ers. She lives in San Diego.

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