Chil­dren’s

Every Pic­ture Tells a Sto­ry: Illus­trat­ed Torah Vers­es and Com­men­tary for Every Age — Book Two: Shmos

Chaim Natan Firszt
  • Review
By – October 31, 2014

Every Pic­ture Tells a Sto­ry will be a series of books illus­trat­ing all five books of the Torah. The first two books have now been pub­lished. The author has cho­sen sev­er­al basic themes for each par­sha and the Bib­li­cal verse relat­ing to each theme is print­ed in Hebrew, explained in mod­ern Hebrew, then trans­lat­ed into for­mal Eng­lish and more col­lo­qui­al Eng­lish. The fac­ing page con­tains a full-col­or pic­ture illus­trat­ing the verse. There is exten­sive back-mat­ter includ­ed: fam­i­ly trees, infor­ma­tion about the tribes, dia­grams, and a glos­sary. Intro­duc­to­ry notes com­ment on translitera­tion and trans­la­tion choic­es and note the author’s phi­los­o­phy that this work was cre­at­ed to gen­er­ate enthu­si­asm for the Torah in the hearts and minds of those who read it.” Each vol­ume is accom­pa­nied by a soft-cov­er col­or­ing book with the same pic­tures depict­ed in the hard­cov­er book, but in out­line form so that chil­dren can more active­ly par­tic­i­pate in the learn­ing experience. 

This graph­ic and col­or­ful method of absorb­ing the Torah’s sto­ries can enhance learn­ing for all chil­dren and may be espe­cial­ly valu­able for those who have dif­fi­cul­ty with text. 

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 7 – 10.

Relat­ed Content

Michal Hoschan­der Malen is the edi­tor of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s young adult and children’s book reviews. A for­mer librar­i­an, she has lec­tured on top­ics relat­ing to lit­er­a­cy, run book clubs, and loves to read aloud to her grandchildren.

Discussion Questions