It is not a sim­ple task to encap­su­late what it means to be Jew­ish in one slim vol­ume designed to broad­ly edu­cate non-Jew­ish chil­dren and attempt to cov­er all aspects of the top­ic: reli­gion, his­to­ry, soci­ol­o­gy, and cul­ture. Although much basic infor­ma­tion is by neces­si­ty miss­ing, the author of this book makes a laud­able attempt to edu­cate about Judaism on a child’s lev­el, accom­pa­nied by col­or pho­tos, illus­tra­tions, maps, and sub­stan­tial back matter. 

Some basic his­to­ry is addressed, along with some of the most fun­da­men­tal reli­gious prin­ci­ples and Jew­ish fig­ures of note. A map of Israel is includ­ed, although this is always prob­lem­at­ic in today’s polit­i­cal cli­mate; this one has the West Bank and Gaza strip sep­a­rate­ly delin­eat­ed. The back mat­ter includes a his­tor­i­cal time­line, sug­ges­tions for fur­ther read­ing, inter­net sources, and a glos­sary of terms. This is part of the publisher’s series intro­duc­ing chil­dren to five world reli­gions and would work par­tic­u­lar­ly well in a class­room setting.

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 9 – 12.