Call it Christ­mas, call it Hanukkah, call it Yule, or just plain win­ter: it’s all one light, accord­ing to this hand­some­ly illus­trat­ed pic­ture book with an ecu­meni­cal mes­sage. It is set some­where in the moun­tains, where a blend­ed fam­i­ly is cel­e­brat­ing both Hanukkah and Christ­mas with a hanukki­ah and a dec­o­rat­ed tree. Stephen is unhap­py that Christ­mas is so changed since his father mar­ried Deb­o­rah, a Jew­ish woman, who didn’t even roast a turkey for din­ner. When his dog, Dewey, is ban­ished out­side for fight­ing with the cat that belongs to Deborah’s son Ari, Stephen huffs out with him. The snowy, star­lit night that sur­rounds boy and dog is cap­tured by deeply col­ored, tex­tured illus­tra­tions that express the spir­it of the sto­ry, which cli­max­es when Stephen encoun­ters an old woman whom he is afraid might be a witch. She is pic­tured in a long, all-encom­pass­ing cloak, the kind that most chil­dren are sure witch­es wear. When she insists that Stephen join her in her lit­tle house for some hot choco­late, she shows him the Yule log that she burns in hon­or of win­ter and then some­thing more won­der­ous, for out of the win­dow Stephen watch­es a suc­ces­sion of ani­mals come to drink in a hole he has chopped in a lit­tle, frozen pond. When Stephen tells her why he ​“hates Christ­mas,” she tells him gen­tly that ​“no mat­ter what you call it…it’s a time to com­fort oth­ers and shed light on dark­ness, whether from lights on a tree, meno­rah can­dles, or a glow­ing Yule log. For wild crea­tures, there’s just starlight. But Stephen, it’s all one light.” With the scene of the ani­mals drink­ing at the pond and Mattie’s words in his heart, Stephen and Dewey return home where things sud­den­ly seem right. Writ­ten with warmth and illus­trat­ed to evoke a child’s sense of won­der, this is a pic­ture book that lib­er­al Jews and inter­mar­ried fam­i­lies will find mean­ing­ful but that those who are wary of the con­fla­tion of Jew­ish with Chris­t­ian and pagan tra­di­tions will find prob­lem­at­ic. Rec­om­mend­ed with reser­va­tions for ages 5 – 9.