A sil­ly and appeal­ing pic­ture book, this is the sto­ry of a class­room filled with chil­dren who are plagued dai­ly by three gob­lins who love to tan­gle their hair. Final­ly one day they come up with a way to out­wit the gob­lins and their solu­tion leads to the ​“inven­tion” of chal­lah. Full of fun­ny names and allit­er­a­tive text, this would work well as a read-aloud. The full-page illus­tra­tions, whim­si­cal­ly cre­at­ed in water-col­or pas­tel shades in a style char­ac­ter­is­tic of the artist’s work in High­lights for Chil­dren, have lots of sub­tle, amus­ing ele­ments for chil­dren to dis­cov­er when they look at the book on their own. At the end of this bread-cen­tered sto­ry, a let­ter to the chil­dren is includ­ed by the author, ​“Rab­bi Zoe”, in which she invites them to think about ​“what gives chal­lah its pow­er” pro­vid­ing some ​“food for thought” about the beau­ty of Shabbat.

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 4 – 7.