Chil­dren’s

Out of Egypt

Moshe Moscowitz and David Sokoloff; David Sokoloff and Jon Carter, illus.
  • Review
By – November 14, 2011

Out of Egypt, like Shazak’s Queen of Per­sia and Mir­a­cle Lights, is a full-length graph­ic nov­el that details the his­to­ry of a Jew­ish hol­i­day. This vol­ume is asso­ci­at­ed with Passover and depicts the exo­dus from Egypt. 

The details of the sto­ry are drawn from both Torah and midrash, and as such may be unfa­mil­iar to many read­ers. Ele­ments such as a mirac­u­lous­ly stretch­ing arm of Pharoah’s daugh­ter (allow­ing her to reach baby Moses), or the sin­gle giant frog that spits out a plague of lit­tle frogs add a mys­ti­cal fla­vor to the sto­ry. While read­ers may enjoy these fan­tas­ti­cal aspects of the book, edu­ca­tors should be aware that the sto­ry has been aug­ment­ed in this way. As with oth­er Shaz­ak works, the sto­ry is con­veyed with an irrev­er­ent­ly mod­ern sense of humor and with rich­ly col­ored comedic art­work. Both art and lay­out give a sense of move­ment that car­ries the sto­ry for­ward. A humor­ous quiz at the back of the book feels like a game, but pro­vides a thor­ough read­ing com­pre­hen­sion review. The sto­ry is also avail­able as an audio CD and as an ani­mat­ed car­toon DVD (not reviewed). Ages 8 – 10.

Hei­di Estrin is librar­i­an for the Feld­man Chil­dren’s Library at Con­gre­ga­tion B’nai Israel in Boca Raton, FL. She is a past chair of the Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Award Com­mit­tee for the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries.

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