Passover obser­vance evokes fam­i­ly mem­o­ries. Maris­sa Moss’s pic­ture book about this home-cen­tered fes­ti­val begins with a girl’s admis­sion of frus­tra­tion with some aspects of the hol­i­day, and then describes how one old­er rel­a­tive renews the child’s feel­ings of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with an exo­dus to free­dom by telling her about his long-ago past.

Adults and chil­dren who are famil­iar with Maris­sa Moss’s Amelia’s Note­book series will rec­og­nize Amelia’s dark hair and bangs and sim­ply drawn but flex­i­ble facial expres­sions in the pro­tag­o­nist of this Jew­ish sto­ry. Like Amelia, the girl in Ellis Island Passover is also hon­est about her emo­tions. In the open­ing sen­tences, she declares that Passover is ​“usu­al­ly” her favorite hol­i­day, but also that this year it is ​“hor­ri­ble.” That straight­for­ward con­tra­dic­tion is an entry point for young read­ers, giv­ing them per­mis­sion to expe­ri­ence ambiva­lence about revered traditions.

The arrival of rel­a­tives at first does noth­ing to dis­lodge the girl from her moody sad­ness, but when Uncle Ezra shows up, she remem­bers their con­nec­tion. The qui­et old­er man seems to intu­itive­ly under­stand the girl’s alien­ation, and he responds with a tale from a dis­tant time and place. In her author’s note, Moss explains how the anec­dote in the book is based on her own great-uncle’s rev­e­la­tions about his arrival to the Unit­ed States as a fright­ened immi­grant flee­ing a dan­ger­ous home­land in Rus­sia. Uncle Ezra’s sto­ry includes his­tor­i­cal details about life for Jews in East­ern Europe, as well as their hope­ful voy­age to Ellis Island and the con­fus­ing events that await­ed them there. His descrip­tions of his first encounter with an unfa­mil­iar fruit and a hasti­ly impro­vised seder fea­tur­ing crack­ers instead of matzah are details that speak across the generations.

Moss’s illus­tra­tions in this high­ly rec­om­mend­ed book are both arche­types and actu­al peo­ple. The immi­grants in their heavy coats and cum­ber­some lug­gage and the smil­ing faces rec­og­niz­ing the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty might be famil­iar images from Jew­ish Amer­i­can his­to­ry. How­ev­er, Moss also grants them indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Boys play mar­bles in the fore­ground of one scene, while groups of men and women con­verse in the back­ground about adult mat­ters. In the con­tem­po­rary pic­ture of the fam­i­ly seder, the girl, seat­ed next to Uncle Ezra, has changed. Her anger has grad­u­al­ly trans­formed into appre­ci­a­tion for her own free­dom, through the pow­er of sto­ries to make the hol­i­day no longer an abstrac­tion. ​“And I have my own sto­ry, too,” she tells the assem­bled guests, rein­forc­ing the idea that every Jew, at Passover, reen­acts the Haggadah’s account of liberation.