One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe

by Dara Horn, Theo Ellsworth (Illustrator)

Overview

A lost afikoman, a time-traveling talking goat, and a never-ending seder illuminate the meaning of Passover in Dara Horn’s hilariously deadpan graphic novel.

A family sits at the Passover seder table, but cannot find their afikoman—the hidden matzah required to end the meal—and as a result, they are trapped at a seder that cannot end. Six months in, a wisecracking talking goat shows up at their door with bad news: Thousands of years of previous seders have accumulated underneath their seder, and their afikoman is stuck in one of them. Now the family’s “wise child” must travel down with the goat through centuries of previous Passovers to find it—and to discover the questions he needs to start asking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324082149
Publisher:	Norton Young Readers
Publication date:	02/25/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
File size:	151 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Dara Horn is the winner of three National Jewish Book Awards and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She lives in New Jersey.
Theo Ellsworth is an artist and comics creator. He lives with his family in Missoula, Montana.

Editorial Reviews

2024-12-14
In this fantastical graphic novel, a boy attempts to bring his family’s never-ending Passover seder to a close.

According to Jewish law, a seder cannot end until the afikoman—a piece of matzah broken and hidden somewhere in the home—is found. So when the unnamed protagonist’s little sister throws the afikoman into a wormhole, the seder is forced to continue indefinitely. Six months in, a talking goat—a reference to a song traditionally performed at the end of the seder—arrives to help the boy track it down. The goat explains that all the seders that have ever occurred are stored under the protagonist’s house, and the afikoman is hidden in one of them. As the pair journey through time, the boy watches his great-grandmother participate in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He witnesses historic seders, such as one that took place during the Spanish Inquisition and another that occurred during the Jewish-Roman Wars. Ellsworth’s black-and-white illustrations are filled with busy crosshatched patterns, while characters often talk over one another. This chaos mirrors the surreal plot; reading the book feels like falling down a rabbit hole. Horn zips from one historical event to another without offering much context or explanation; most readers, even those versed in Jewish tradition, will likely be confused. The protagonist’s reflections on his identity and family are intriguing but similarly rushed. Characters have skin the color of the page.

A wild ride that will leave most struggling to keep up.(Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews