The unique and pro­lif­ic Patri­cia Polac­co again presents us with a look into the life and actions of a strong grand­moth­er, this time a Jew­ish match­mak­er. Jerome has a bub­bie who is a tal­ent­ed shad­chan; she has only failed to pro­vide ONE of her clients, picky Mr. Suss­man, with a spouse. Bubbie’s young grand­son is depict­ed to look exact­ly like Rot­ten Richie, Polacco’s broth­er and pro­tag­o­nist of two of her suc­cess­ful sto­ries. The clients are all depict­ed with humor, even with a com­ic touch, and with all their warts. Bub­bie works hard to sat­is­fy Mr. Sussman’s needs but to no avail. Polac­co has writ­ten many books about her eth­ni­cal­ly mixed fam­i­ly; sev­er­al por­tray the Jew­ish mem­bers beau­ti­ful­ly, name­ly, The Keep­ing Quilt and The But­ter­fly. This fam­i­ly sto­ry, like oth­ers by this author, goes a long dis­tance in help­ing the read­er appre­ci­ate fam­i­ly char­ac­ters and his­to­ry, and also gives the read­er a rea­son to believe there is always hope in life, despite all the vicis­si­tudes. Polacco’s famil­iar artis­tic style is per­fect­ly at one with the sto­ry. In this oeu­vre Bub­bie and Mr. Sussman’s fea­tures are some­what exag­ger­at­ed, prob­a­bly to iden­ti­fy them as ​“the crooked parts who have final­ly found a lid” (a quote from the ded­i­ca­tion). A win­ning sto­ry rec­om­mend­ed for ages five to eight, filled with Jew­ish con­tent.