Fifth grad­er Ellie Sil­ver is eager to go to the new indoor water park, but her par­ents and broth­er are not inter­est­ed. When Ellie is invit­ed to accom­pa­ny her best friend Megan’s fam­i­ly, she’s ecsta­t­ic — until she learns that Megan’s fam­i­ly is going on Rosh Hashanah. Ellie’s par­ents will not let her go, and their refusal sparks a jour­ney of reli­gious inquiry. Why do we need two days of Rosh Hashanah? What’s the point of the hol­i­day? Through Ellie’s lessons about the hol­i­day at reli­gious school and her inter­ac­tions with fam­i­ly mem­bers, she comes to appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of Rosh Hashanah and teshu­va. The nov­el is clear­ly intend­ed to teach as much as to enter­tain, and that empha­sis may make it more pop­u­lar with adults than the intend­ed audi­ence of chil­dren. Nonethe­less, many chil­dren, espe­cial­ly those in pub­lic or non-Jew­ish pri­vate schools who may face sim­i­lar con­flicts around Jew­ish hol­i­days, will be glad to read about Ellie’s ini­tial resis­tance and her even­tu­al accep­tance of the oppor­tu­ni­ties Rosh Hashanah pro­vides. She and her fam­i­ly are por­trayed as a warm, lov­ing fam­i­ly, with the real­is­tic addi­tion of sib­lings squab­bling and chil­dren occa­sion­al­ly argu­ing with their par­ents. This is the first of twelve planned books about the Jew­ish cal­en­dar fea­tur­ing Ellie (called ​“YaYa” at home as a play on ​“Yael,” her Hebrew name) and her twin broth­er Joel (“YoYo”). For ages 8 – 11.