Chil­dren’s

Tara’s Flight

Ruth Eitzen; Allan Eitzen, illus.
  • Review
By – March 14, 2012
In this ver­sion of the Noah’s Ark sto­ry, the main char­ac­ter is not Noah, but Aram, Noah’s grand­son. Aram and Tara, the dove, play togeth­er while grand­fa­ther Noah is build­ing the ark. Aram helps his grand­fa­ther care for the birds dur­ing the flood, and it is Aram who gets Tara ready for her impor­tant flight to find dry land. The lan­guage used to tell the sto­ry makes it acces­si­ble to ele­men­tary school chil­dren but not too dif­fi­cult for preschool­ers to under­stand. The mixed media illus­tra­tions allow the bright col­ors and tex­tures to jump off the pages. Each bird on the page has been cre­at­ed to show its intri­ca­cy and per­son­al­i­ty. Tara’s job has always been as a mes­sen­ger bird, and she knows the impor­tance of her task. Even after the flood, Tara con­tin­ues to keep Noah and his fam­i­ly con­nect­ed, for­ev­er insur­ing the dove as a mes­sen­ger of peace and well-being. Ages 4 – 8.
Rachel Ros­ner is the Direc­tor of the Jew­ish Book Fes­ti­val in Rochester, NY. She also runs Jew­ish Fam­i­ly Pro­grams for the JCC, and has worked there since 1994. She holds a degree in Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion from Syra­cuse University.

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