In a lilt­ing, lyri­cal style, Jill Ham­mer takes the read­er through the cycle of the Jew­ish year with the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, describ­ing sea­son­al changes, hol­i­days and holy days. Adam and Eve observe the moon and its effect on time. They enjoy autumn and its har­vest, not­ing that it is ​“the time to remem­ber, learn, and start again.” In the win­ter, they kin­dle fire to wel­come the longer days and name those days, ​“Chanukah, the fes­ti­val of light.” In the spring, they cel­e­brate free­dom with Pesach and grat­i­tude with Shavuot. Sum­mer­time brings Tisha b’Av, ​“the day to remem­ber.” And when sum­mer ends, they find their way through the year togeth­er once again.

The illus­tra­tions in this book are extreme­ly inter­est­ing, based on visu­al research into the belief sys­tems and art of the Ancient Near East. Accord­ing to the illus­tra­tor, Zoë Cohen, some of the sym­bols used in the sto­ry are drawn from the art of Canaan­ite, Assyr­i­an, Ugarit­ic, Mesopotami­an, Baby­lon­ian, and Sumer­ian cul­tures, which were con­cur­rent with ear­ly Hebra­ic culture. 

The book includes notes on the Jew­ish hol­i­days and a guide to the iconog­ra­phy. It is pub­lished by a Uni­tar­i­an pub­lish­ing house and has a fore­word by Rab­bi Sandy Eisen­berg Sas­so as well as a note about the Jew­ish leg­end on which it is based.

Rec­om­mend­ed for teens to adults, due to its advanced vocab­u­lary and sym­bol­ic illustrations.