Matzah Craze

by Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh, Lauren Gallegos (Illustrator)

Overview

When Noa refuses to swap food from her lunch one day, her friends wonder why. She explains it's because it's Passover. For the rest of the week, she brings Passover foods to school to share with her friends to let them enjoy the holiday fun.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541586697
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/01/2021
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	674,526
Product dimensions:	9.75(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.13(d)
Lexile:	480L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh regularly writes for National Geographic KIDS. Her many books include Hard Hat Cat, Kol Hakavod: Way to Go!, A Hoopoe says Oop!, Rah! Rah! Mujadara, Can You Hear a Coo, Coo? and Listen! Israel's All Around. She is also a lyricist for pop songs, advertisements and motion pictures. She lives in Burbank, California.

Lauren Gallegos has illustrated many children’s books since she earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Illustration from Cal State Fullerton. She continues to improve her craft and illustrate for young children. She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband and young daughter.

Editorial Reviews

"Chil­dren will under­stand that the flat crunchy bread with holes may be deli­cious, but the com­mit­ment of friends to accom­mo­date and embrace each other’s dif­fer­ences is most important." — Emily Schneider, Jewish Book Council

From the Publisher

02/08/2021

Any school-age Jewish kid who observes Passover understands the lunchroom situation in which redheaded, freckled Noa finds herself. She can’t make any food trades due to Passover dietary rules, and when she opens her lunch box, her tablemates see a large crackerlike food: “All week long, I don’t eat bread./ Matzah’s what I eat instead.” Noa tells her friends the story of Passover, and for the rest of the week, she brings in a different matzah treat to share with her now-enthralled classmates. Kiffel-Alcheh’s couplet text gets a little wearing, and it’s hard to believe that all of Noa’s pals think that plain matzah is the greatest thing since, well, sliced bread (“ ‘Mmm,’ her friends say as they munch./ ‘Matzah has a tasty crunch!’ ”). But Gallegos’s peppy, animationlike illustrations feel true enough to school life, depicting an inclusive student body eager to learn—and to nosh. Ages 4–9. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

2021-01-13
Noa shares her Passover matzah.

Everyone usually shares at school lunch, but one day, the redheaded White girl insists on eating her own lunch. In very simple rhyming couplets, Noa quickly tells her tablemates the reason for eating matzah during Passover. During the Jews’ escape from Egypt, Noa, says, matzah was first created, because “with no time for bread to rise, / it came out flat, about this size.” (The size of the Israelites’ unleavened flatbread is not mentioned in Exodus, a misleading detail evidently added for the sake of the rhyme.) The illustration style sets these pages aside from the modern-day story and renders the Jews and Pharaoh with the same brown skin. Noa brings extra matzah for the rest of the weeklong holiday so that her friends can taste it in different ways: “chocolate matzah, matzah brei… / then a matzah pizza pie!” The book assumes the audience’s familiarity with Passover if not Noa’s racially and ethnically diverse classmates’; there is no glossary and only a limited holiday endnote. At the end, “Noa says, ‘Now you can see / what my matzah means to me. / Sharing it with you this way / makes it a perfect holiday.’ ” This sentiment is, sadly, undercut by Noa’s omission of the traditional welcoming of the Prophet Elijah to the seder. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9.8-by-19.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 27.1% of actual size.)

Of potential use in settings that have other resources on or background knowledge of Passover. (Picture book. 5-7)

Kirkus Reviews