Chil­dren’s

Sadie and Ori and the Blue Blanket

Jamie Korn­gold; Julie Forten­ber­ry, illus.
  • Review
By – May 3, 2016

The pop­u­lar, cheery duo, sib­lings Sadie and Ori, return in a warm, bit­ter­sweet pic­ture book expe­ri­enc­ing aging with grand­ma with whom they are close. The three­some has done so many things togeth­er, has devel­oped cher­ished mem­o­ries, espe­cial­ly of the annu­al cycle of Jew­ish hol­i­days. Grand­ma knit the Blue Blan­ket of the title which she calls the togeth­er blan­ket”. It serves var­i­ous pur­pos­es through the years, main­ly for snug­gling under for sto­ries. The ear­ly part of the sto­ry shares days with grand­ma who runs, reads, plays, chas­es, cooks, sews, hosts and teach­es her delight­ed grand­chil­dren. Sadie and Ori grow big­ger and become more and more capa­ble; Grand­ma does less and less. Not only are her arms, legs and eyes not strong enough for activ­i­ties, but her mind is not strong enough to remem­ber. The duo miss their grand­ma of the past as she miss­es what she used to do for them. They decide it is their turn to care for her after all her years of car­ing for them. The book ends as it starts, in the rock­ing chair, the three curled up under the togeth­er blan­ket, only this time Sadie and Ori are the read­ers. A three han­ky end­ing to a wise, won­der­ful book which deliv­ers a famil­iar, real, but sad sit­u­a­tion in a com­fort­ing way with touch­ing vocab­u­lary that will sure­ly res­onate with every family.

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 3 – 6.


Relat­ed Content: 

Ellen G. Cole, a retired librar­i­an of the Levine Library of Tem­ple Isa­iah in Los Ange­les, is a past judge of the Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Awards and a past chair­per­son of that com­mit­tee. She is a co-author of the AJL guide, Excel­lence in Jew­ish Children’s Lit­er­a­ture. Ellen is the recip­i­ent of two major awards for con­tri­bu­tion to Juda­ic Librar­i­an­ship, the Fan­ny Gold­stein Mer­it Award from the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries and the Dorothy Schroed­er Award from the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. She is on the board of AJLSC.

Discussion Questions