Dance, Sing, Remember: A Celebration of Jewish Holidays
From Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, in early fall, to Shavuot,  celebrating the first harvest of the spring and the accepting of the Torah,Dance, Sing, and Rememberoffers an engaging, colorful introduction to  the moods and meanings of a variety of Jewish holidays. Leslie Kimmelman invites  readers to honor 11 of these special days by learning what each one is about and  how it is observed. Kimmelman's warm, accessible writing provides enough  background information for anyone--Jewish or not--who wants to understand why a  sukkah (hut) is built in the backyard during Sukkot, or when the shofar (long,  twisty horn) is blown, or how to play the dreidel (spinning top) game. Ora  Eitan's unusual and appealing illustrations appear framed in white, and  superimposed on full spreads of background color and patterns. Perhaps most  intriguing of all is the two-page spread for Yom Hashoah, the sad and serious  day in which Jewish people remember the Holocaust, the Shoah. Grainy gray turns  to a solid black backdrop, with a small silhouette of a bird flying off a corner  of the page. Most of the other illustrations are full of light and color, so  this contrast is especially striking. Incorporating recipes, activities, music,  and stories, this lovely picture book provides a window to the idea that "every  holiday is a way of remembering, a way of connecting children to their parents  and grandparents and totheirparents and grandparents--all the way back  to the very first Jews." (Ages 4 to 8)--Emilie Coulter