Chil­dren’s

Shab­bat Hiccups

Tra­cy New­man; Ilana Exel­by, illus.
  • Review
By – July 14, 2016

In this live­ly pic­ture book, Jon­ah bat­tles hic­cups while he and his fam­i­ly cel­e­brate Shab­bat. Var­i­ous mem­bers of his fam­i­ly sug­gest reme­dies of all kinds: his cousin Eden tries to scare him, his Grand­ma Sue sug­gests eat­ing sug­ar and drink­ing water, even shout­ing Boo” is sug­gest­ed, but noth­ing seems to work. 

The sur­prise end­ing adds a nice touch to the already humor­ous sit­u­a­tion. Much is learned about cel­e­brat­ing Shab­bat in a fam­i­ly set­ting. The bright, col­or­ful gouache illus­tra­tions enhance the rhyth­mic text. The sto­ry depicts the var­i­ous Sab­bath rit­u­als with­out being didac­tic. This is an enter­tain­ing sto­ry for 4 to 8 year olds. 

Sandy Lan­ton, a for­mer teacher, earned a BA in Psy­chol­o­gy and an MS in Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion from Queens Col­lege. She is the author of Daddy’s Chair (Syd­ney Tay­lor Award), The Hap­py Hack­ers, Lots Of Latkes, Still a Fam­i­ly: A Young Child’s Book About Divorce (Git­tle Hon­or­able Men­tion), and The Lit­tlest Levine (named one of the best Jew­ish Children’s Books of 2014 by Tablet Mag­a­zine). Her work has appeared in mag­a­zines as well as sev­er­al antholo­gies. When she isn’t writ­ing sto­ries or vis­it­ing schools, Ms. Lan­ton likes to cro­chet, line dance, play bridge and pick­le­ball, spend time with her grandchil­dren, and read, read, read.

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