Pessach is Coming!

Let's Find That Book! will be taking a Passover break and will return on
April 18th with books to commemorate  Holocaust Day.

Clip art by Liz Elby

!חג שמח

A classic Pesach children's book is by לוין קיפנס / Levin Kipnis who wrote the book אגוז של זהב / The Golden Walnut. It was right before Passover and Gadi and Noa were sad.  They don't have new clothes for the holiday or walnuts to play with.  All of a sudden an old man appears and gives them a walnut.  They play with it and then the walnut falls and they run after it.  Read the book to find out what happens next and who the old man really is.  Ages 4-6.

When my children were small, they all loved this Haggadah. אגדה של הגדה, הגדה של פסח  The Animated Haggadah  - The Passover Haggadah by רוני אורן / Roni Oren. Roni Oren has illustrated this Hagaddah with the amazing clay/plasticine figures that he created. The book has the full Haggadah text.  Here's a short clip of the animated movie that the book is based on.  Ages 5-10.

Passover is always celebrated at Springtime.  Passover vacation is a perfect time to go out and learn about Israeli wildflowers.  Whether you've just made aliyah or have been living in Israel for many years  - this is the book for you and your children/grandchildren.  מגדיר פרחי הבר בישראל לילדים ונוער / A Children's Handbook of Israeli Wildflowers by יונה זילברמן / Yona Zilberman is easy to use.   Look up a flower in the book by its color.  Every page has interesting information about each flower. There is a glossary in the back of the book and instructions on how to dry flowers.  This is a book for the whole family to enjoy.






Tip no. 19

Playing with nuts on Passover is quite an old tradition. After you read אגוז של זהב to your children/ grandchildren, give them each a whole walnut to play with. Make up a game or play a game you remember from your childhood.  Afterward, you can open up the nut and show the children the walnut meat inside.  I did this for many years with my first and second graders.  They had never seen a whole walnut before. Here's an interesting article with some game ideas to get you started.  I still have fond memories of playing some of these games as a child.

What's on my Bookshelf ?

This week's post features books from my bookshelf.  Some are books that I am re-reading and others are books I read for the first time.   I  just re-read אלרגיה. I'm always impressed each time I read it what a good book it is. 

המטריה הצהבה /The Yellow Umbrella illustrated by ריו ציו סו / Jae-Soo Liu is a wordless picture book. The "reader" has a bird's eye view of a yellow umbrella walking along.  Slowly, the yellow umbrella is joined by umbrellas of all different colors. They provide a splash of color on this gray, rainy day. The umbrellas walk through the city through parks and over a bridge.  On the last page, you see a group of children holding the umbrellas going into their school.   A CD of wonderful piano music comes with this book.  

Looking at the wonderful, soft pictures accompanied by the music is a

lovely experience to have with your children/grandchildren. For all ages.

האף של וינסנט / Vincent's Nose by ישי רון / Yishai Ron is a mystery set in Holland.  Henrik, the guard at the Van Gogh Museum and Gerard, a French mouse are best friends.  One day  Henrik finds teeth marks on a painting of Vincent Van Gogh and immediately suspects Gerard.

Gerard can't convince Henrik of his innocence but Henrik's daughter Laura is determined to do just that.  Read the book to find out who the culprit really is.

Ages 8-10.

אלרגיה/ Allergy by יהונתן גפן /Yehonatan Gefen is the story of Keren and  Vered.

"Even today,  though it's been almost three years since it happened, Keren sometimes still dreams about the week that they left her best friend at Keren's house and didn't say when they would come to get her. And afterward, they came and took her and didn't say when they were bringing her back".    ( my translation)

Vered's parents have to go to the U.S. and leave her with Keren and her parents.  Keren finds that having her best friend staying with her can be challenging.  Her parents are giving Vered way too much attention.  Ages 8-10.







Hili wants to be like every other student in her 6th-grade class in the book אף פעם לא מלכה / Never the Star by ציפי גון-גרוס / Tsippy Gon-Gross.  She doesn't want anyone to know that she is dyslexic.  There is no chance of her being popular if anyone finds out she is different from the other children in the class. She has enough problems being sandwiched in between a popular older sister and a smart younger brother.  How does she learn to deal with her siblings, parents, friends, and the children in her class? Ages 10-13.






Tip no. 18

Today, March 21, is World Poetry Day

One of my favorite children's poems is 

" מה  עושות האיילות"

What Do the Does Do?

by the famous Israeli poetess - Leah Goldberg

The poem was set to music - enjoy the video!

Three Queens for Purim

Clip art by Liz Elsby

Instead of writing about Purim children's books, I decided to write about books which have to do with the word מלכה / queen.  Only one book is actually a Purim book.

In the book מלכה בירושלים/  Malkah, A Queen in Jerusalem,  Malkah is sad.  Her mother promised to sew a queen costume for her but now has no time.  A crying Malkah runs out into the streets of early 20th century Jerusalem and finds her way to the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design where she meets its founder, Boris Schatz. Schatz asks the weavers and silversmiths at the Academy to create a queen costume for Malkah.  The authors תמי שם-טוב / Tami Shem-Tov and רחלי זנדבנק / Racheli Zandbank bring history to life.
For ages 5-7.

סעודה אצל המלכה / A Royal Banquet with the Queen is written and illustrated by רותו מודן / Rutu Modan.  Nina's parents keep correcting her table manners.  When Nina gets invited to dinner by the Queen of England, she is unimpressed by the food and asked for spaghetti and ketchup.  Perplexed by the array of silverware, Nina eats the spaghetti with her hands. The Queen and her guests decide to follow Nina's lead.  Your children will enjoy seeing how the royal guests eat their dinner.

 I love Modan's  comic book style illustrations ( she is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy).  You and your children/grandchildren will spend quite a bit of time examining every detail of the banquet pictures. Ages 4-7.

This book has been translated into English as Maya Makes a Mess.

נסיכת השמש/ The Sun Princess is not your average children's book.  דויד גרוסמן/David Grossman wrote this beautiful, poetic book for all ages. Noga asks her mother   " If I'm your little princess, does that mean that you are a queen?"  Her mother explains to Noga that she is the Sun Queen one day a year.  Amazingly enough, tomorrow is that day.  The next morning,  Noga and her mother get up before sunrise to greet the sun.  They dance and sing to encourage the sun to rise. Slowly the first rays of sunlight appear and the birds start singing. In the evening, the mother and daughter encourage the sun to go to sleep.  They watch the sunset until there is only a sliver of red left between the sky and the water.  Ages 4+

Tip no. 17

המכללה האקדמית לחינוך ע"ש דויד ילין

המרכז לספרות ילדים ונוער

 Are you looking for a children's book on a certain subject?.  You can find lists of children's books on many different subjects at   The Center for Children's Books at the David Yellin Academic College of Education in Jerusalem. Some of the subjects included are  Food, Feminism, Holidays, Friendship, and  Age. 

Wishing you a Happy Purim!

  !פורים שמח

Kid Detectives

I love detective stories.  When I was a girl, I read the entire Nancy Drew series.  Several of the most popular detective series have been translated into Hebrew.  This includes ננסי דרו / Nancy Drew, בני הרדי/ The Hardy Boys,  and השבעייה הסודית/ The Secret Seven.

יונתן בלש ממש/ Jonathan The Effective Detective by דויד גרוסמן / David Grossman will be your child's first detective story.  Jonathan's slippers are missing. His green cup is missing and his father's glasses.  What's going on?  Is there a thief in the house?  Little Jonathan decides to be the house detective and find the missing items. In the end, Jonathan not only finds out who took the items but why.
Ages 3-6.











Ariel Berkowitz has a mystery to solve.  But his mother thinks other things are more important than detective work.  Ariel promises to clean his room so his mother allows him to solve one more mystery.  Who keeps stealing the pizza delivery boy's  skates? Find the answer in ברקוביץ חוקר פרטי: תעלומת הגלגליות האבודות / Berkovitz Private Detective: The Mystery of the Lost  Skates by יורגן בנשרוס / Jurgen Banscherus.  This book and the other two books in the series are translated from the  German.  Ages 7-9.








אריך קסטנר / Erich Kastner ( 1899 - 1974)  wrote אמיל והבלשים / Emil and the Detectives in 1929.  This book was one of the first detective books written specifically for children. Though Kastner is a German author, he has always been a very popular in Israel.  I'm sure it helps that he was anti-Nazi. Almost all of Kastner's  many children's books have been translated into Hebrew.

Emil's mother gives him money to bring to his grandmother in Berlin.  It's a large sum of money and he pins it to the lining of his jacket.  He falls asleep during the train trip and when he wakes up, the money is gone! In Berlin,  Emil meets a boy named Gustav. Gustav and his gang of "detective" friends help Emil find the cash.  Ages 9-11.






שמונה בעקבות אחד/ Eight Following One by ימימה אבידר- טשרנוביץ / Yemima Avidar Tchernovitz is the first children's detective book written in Hebrew. It was published in 1945.  A city boy named Hagai is sent to a kibbutz during WWII to get away from the bombings in Haifa.  There he meets a gang of children and their dog whose leader is named Amos.  The children follow a dangerous German spy.  The spy captures Amos.  How will the gang save their leader? This book is a great page-turner.

A new edition was published in 1996.  This edition was quite unusual. Fifty years after the book was first published,  Avidar-Chernavitz and her daughter updated the vocabulary and writing style in the book to make it more accessible to today's children.  Ages 10-12.

Tip no. 16




Several years ago, I took an online course in children's series books. During the course, I was sad to learn that the author of the Nancy Drew series was not really Caroline Keene.  There is no author by the name of Caroline Keene.  The Nancy Drew series was written by a series of ghostwriters for the Stratemeyer Syndicate.  Ghostwriters from the syndicate also wrote The Hardy Boys series.