Chil­dren’s

Chanukah Guess Who?: A Lift-the-Flap Book

Ariel­la Stern; Pat­ti Argoff , illus.
  • Review
By – May 29, 2013
These two cute books tell about times when Jews were in per­il of death, but end­ed instead in cel­e­bra­tion. The sto­ry of each hol­i­day is told in an ask and respond” for­mat. Bright, age-appro­pri­ate but slight­ly goofy com­ic book type illus­tra­tions demon­strate how the Jews went from per­il to vic­to­ry. The ques­tion is phrased on both the left and right hand pages and the answer is revealed through a win­dow on the right page when the flap cov­er is opened. While the clues are in Eng­lish, the answers are in Eng­lish and Roman­ized Hebrew. An old­er child might vol­un­teer an addi­tion­al sign in Hebrew let­ters. The book can be played” dif­fer­ent­ly accord­ing to the ages of the par­tic­i­pants. While some of the words used may be dif­fi­cult for the youngest child, just one year lat­er, they might be per­fect; the baby of the fam­i­ly can just chime in. 

Chanukah Guess Who? starts with the light­ing of the meno­rah, then con­tin­ues on to the mak­ing of latkes, the his­to­ry of the hol­i­day and, final­ly, shows an illus­trat­ed neigh­bor­hood total­ly lit by a Chanukiyah in mod­ern times. Purim Guess Who? is filled with lots of hys­ter­i­cal fun, but there is plen­ty of his­to­ry there, as well. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly nice that the detailed illus­tra­tions and text show that mitzvot are as much a part of Purim as the fun, maybe more. These are fun ques­tion and response type books that work well with par­tic­i­pa­tion by any num­ber of lis­ten­ers, from one to a group. Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 3 – 6

Addi­tion­al Title Fea­tured in Review


Mar­cia W. Pos­ner, Ph.D., of the Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al and Tol­er­ance Cen­ter of Nas­sau Coun­ty, is the library and pro­gram direc­tor. An author and play­wright her­self, she loves review­ing for JBW and read­ing all the oth­er reviews and arti­cles in this mar­velous periodical.

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