Chil­dren’s

The Knish War on Riv­ing­ton Street

Joanne Oppen­heim; Jon Davis, illus.

  • Review
By – October 27, 2017

The Knish War on Riv­ing­ton Street by Joanne Oppen­heim | Jew­ish Book Council

Ah! There’s noth­ing like a good knish! Benny’s mama, Mol­ly, sells the best knish­es on Riv­ing­ton Street. In fact, she sells the only knish­es on the busy street and at only five cents each, they are a deli­cious bargain.

Every­thing is fine until Mrs. Tisch comes along and starts sell­ing square knish­es at four cents a knish. Benny’s father takes the com­pe­ti­tion as a chal­lenge and the war begins between the two stores. Both stores low­er their prices, bring in enter­tain­ment, and expand the store­fronts, all to steal cus­tomers away from the oth­er. The com­pe­ti­tion gets out of hand and the may­or has to step in. His cre­ative solu­tion pro­vides a won­der­ful step­ping stone for fam­i­lies who wish to dis­cuss ways of solv­ing disputes.

The Knish War on Riv­ing­ton Street is a great book for chil­dren ages 4 to 8. The illus­tra­tions are fun, the text is fun­ny, and the edu­ca­tion­al mes­sage comes across gen­tly. This delight­ful pic­ture book is high­ly recommended.

Mar­cia Ber­neger is a retired teacher who lives with her hus­band and three crazy dogs. She taught both first and sec­ond grade, as well as spe­cial edu­ca­tion. She cur­rent­ly teach­es Torah school, in addi­tion to her vol­un­teer work in class­rooms, libraries, and with var­i­ous fundrais­ers. She lives in San Diego.

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