Chil­dren’s

Rosh Hashanah is Coming!

Tra­cy New­man; Viviana Garo­foli, illus.
  • Review
By – March 24, 2017

These two delight­ful tiny tot hol­i­day books are com­ple­ments to one anoth­er. Writ­ten and illus­trat­ed by the same peo­ple, they use the same for­mat to teach about the hol­i­days. For Rosh Hashanah, a child blow­ing the sho­far is depict­ed on the cov­er while for the Passover book the cov­er pic­ture is expand­ed to include a grand­moth­er and two chil­dren. Full fam­i­lies with grand­par­ents are part of the illus­tra­tions of both books. The dog is an impor­tant part of the group and par­tic­i­pates in almost all the activ­i­ties for both hol­i­days.
Through col­or­ful draw­ings and short well-writ­ten vers­es on each page, chil­dren will be intro­duced to the high­lights of each hol­i­day. For Rosh Hashanah, round chal­lahs, the sho­far, apples with hon­ey, pome­gran­ates and new clothes are shown. For Passover, eat­ing matzah, clean­ing the house, mak­ing matzah ball soup, fill­ing the seder plate and look­ing for the afikomen are illus­trat­ed. The cho­rus of Rosh Hashanah is com­ing” or Passover is com­ing” is a repet­i­tive device per­fect for the very young to remem­ber the names of the hol­i­days.
Young chil­dren will get a sense of the hol­i­day obser­vances because they are pre­sent­ed so sim­ply and in such a light-heart­ed spirit. 

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 1 – 4

Addi­tion­al Titles Fea­tured in the Review

Marge Kaplan is a retired Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage teacher. She is a con­sul­tant for the children’s lit­er­a­ture group for the Roseville, MN school sys­tem and is a sto­ry­teller of Jew­ish tales.

Discussion Questions