Chil­dren’s

Aster­oid Gold­berg: Passover in Out­er Space

  • Review
By – May 21, 2021

In an out-of-this-world sto­ry, young Aster­oid and her fam­i­ly are head­ed back to Earth from their trip to Plu­to when space traf­fic neces­si­tates a land­ing delay. They real­ize that they won’t make it home in time for the first day of Passover and will have to con­duct their seder on board the spaceship.

Clean­ing out chametz in zero grav­i­ty is chal­leng­ing, and where can they get the prop­er food for their seder meal? With the big dip­per, Aster­oid scoops up some of Jupiter’s moons which make ide­al mat­zoh balls; a piece bro­ken off of one of Sat­urn’s rings is as crunchy as mat­zoh. With cre­ativ­i­ty and verve, using the Milky Way as a pantry, Aster­oid gath­ers all the ele­ments for a spec­tac­u­lar star-stud­ded seder, end­ing with the not-quite-tra­di­tion­al sen­ti­ment Next Year In Out­er Space!”

Humor­ous­ly illus­trat­ed in rich tones rem­i­nis­cent of a star­ry night, writ­ten in clever, rhyth­mic verse, and includ­ing a help­ful glos­sary of terms, this unusu­al book deliv­ers oth­er-world­ly fun.

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.

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