Chil­dren’s

Dinosaur on Passover

Diane Levin Rauch­w­erg­er; Jason Wolff, illus.
  • Review
By – May 14, 2012
The big­ger than life” orange guest that was intro­duced in Dinosaur on Hanukkah, returns for anoth­er Jew­ish hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tion. This time the overzeal­ous rep­tile wants to par­tic­i­pate in all the Passover rit­u­als with a lit­tle boy and his fam­i­ly, no mat­ter how dif­fi­cult the prepa­ra­tions appear to be! The lit­tle boy puts his over­sized new friend to work and togeth­er they remove the for­bid­den foods, pre­pare horse­rad­ish, sing the Four Ques­tions, drink the wine, retell the sto­ry of the Exo­dus, eat matzah, search for the afikomen, and open the door for Eli­jah. Although Dino” is very enthu­si­as­tic and very focused on being help­ful, his huge hulk makes him very clum­sy and caus­es him to wreck hav­oc at the Seder. The fam­i­ly is nat­u­ral­ly relieved when after all his hard work, Dino miss­es the end of Passover by falling asleep! The sim­ple rhyming text has a lyri­cal cadence that will be enjoy­able to share out loud: He search­es for the afikomen/​The books fly left and right/​I have to help him find it/​So it doesn’t take all night.” Col­or­ful dou­ble-page acrylic illus­tra­tions com­ple­ment the text with many humor­ous details. In addi­tion, a brief end­note suc­cinct­ly explains the mean­ing of Passover, which may spark inter­est in find­ing out more about the hol­i­day. For ages 3 – 5.

Read­ing Guide

Debra Gold has been a children’s librar­i­an for over 20 years in the Cuya­hoga Coun­ty Pub­lic Library Sys­tem. An active mem­ber of the ALA, she has served on many com­mit­tees includ­ing the Calde­cott, New­bery and Batchelder committees.

Discussion Questions