Chil­dren’s

Four Good Friends and a Boat

Menucha Fuchs. Adapt­ed by Shoshana Lep­on. Estie Hass, illus.
  • Review
By – July 20, 2012

These books are part of a series pub­lished with spill-proof lam­i­nat­ed­pages, mak­ing it clear that they are intend­ed for a preschool audience.The sto­ries are sim­ple, short and heav­i­ly illus­trat­ed; one page iscom­plete­ly illus­trat­ed and the fac­ing page con­tains text. Each is asto­ry-in-rhyme, told with humor. Each is on a theme of friends help­ingfriends, friends giv­ing to friends, friends being thought­ful toward eachother, or help­ing chil­dren deal with fears. The themes often con­cern­do­ing good deeds or mitzvot. Togeth­er, the author and illus­tra­torestab­lish a friend­ly, healthy play envi­ron­ment geared to mak­ing chil­dren­com­fort­able. The illus­tra­tions are cute and done in vivid col­or, with­mod­est­ly dressed char­ac­ters, each with a head cov­er­ing. Par­tic­u­larlyap­pro­pri­ate for libraries serv­ing Ortho­dox chil­dren, but use­ful in anyear­ly child­hood set­ting. Rec­om­mend­ed for read­ing aloud to ages 2 – 5.

Addi­tion­al Titles Fea­tured in Review 

 
Shelly Feit has an M.L.S. and a Sixth-year Spe­cial­ist’s Cer­tifi­cate in infor­ma­tion sci­ence. She is the library direc­tor and media spe­cial­ist at the Mori­ah School in Engle­wood, NJ.

Discussion Questions