Chil­dren’s

Chanukah Lights

Michael J. Rosen; Robert Sabu­da, illus.
  • Review
By – December 19, 2011

Chanukah Lights is a visu­al­ly mag­nif­i­cent pop-up book. The pris­tine, intri­cate­ly­de­tailed white pop-ups are set against the rich­ly col­ored back­grounds and the­crafts­man­ship is superb. It is a cof­fee-table book, a work of art that isun­like­ly to sur­vive con­stant han­dling. The text, a short para­graph fore­ach dou­ble page pop-up, does not have equal impact. The mean­ings ofsev­er­al para­graphs are obscure and not suit­able for the age rec­om­mend­ed by thep­ub­lish­er, which is five years old. On some pages, the text and pop-ups are­mu­tu­al­ly sup­port­ive, while on oth­ers they are con­fus­ing. In addition,historical allu­sions are not explained, for exam­ple, “…where in the holds ofships refugees long for peace like the sight of land.” This fur­ther dimin­ish­es­the impact of the text por­tions of the book. It would be wise to dis­cuss­the sto­ry and mean­ing of Chanukah before read­ing this book with chil­dren. For ages 9 and up; how­ev­er, the pop-ups are ageless.

Nao­mi Kramer is a retired read­ing con­sul­tant teacher who devel­oped cur­ricu­lum for using lit­er­a­ture to edu­cate chil­dren and adults in the his­to­ry of the Holo­caust. She is a docent and edu­ca­tor at the Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al and Tol­er­ance Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter of Nas­sau County.

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