Chil­dren’s

Sun­rise, Sunset

Lyrics by Shel­don Har­nick. Music by Jer­ry Bock. Ian Schoen­herr, illus.
  • Review
By – October 17, 2011
This delight­ful pic­ture book adap­ta­tion of the beloved song, Sun­rise, Sun­set” from the famous musi­cal Fid­dler on the Roof, would be a won­der­ful gift item for any wed­ding, birth, bar mitz­vah or grad­u­a­tion. For those who have trou­ble keep­ing a dry eye when this song is played at wed­dings, good luck get­ting through this book! While the read­er is trans­port­ed to a small Jew­ish vil­lage of old through gor­geous, gold­en-tinged illus­tra­tions, the song’s lyrics dance across the page, beg­ging to be sung with a wist­ful smile. Ian Schoenherr’s vibrant illus­tra­tions fol­low a young girl’s jour­ney through life as she matures, falls in love with a child­hood friend, gets mar­ried and, by the last page, has her own child. The char­ac­ters look a lot like the actors from the movie ver­sion, includ­ing the skin­ny horse and vil­lage rooftops, but one doesn’t have to know the sto­ry of Tzei­t­el and Motel to enjoy this trib­ute to the Jew­ish cycle of life. One par­tic­u­lar­ly clever theme is the use of bright yel­low sun­flow­ers (“seedlings turn overnight to sunflow’rs”) that fol­low the chil­dren as they grow and mature. The final dou­ble page spread cel­e­brates the joys of a lov­ing fam­i­ly when the young cou­ple observes their baby’s first steps as he reach­es to embrace a gold­en sun­flower held out before him. This book would be under­stood by chil­dren, of course, but the adults are the ones who will be moved by its mean­ing. Intend­ed for ages 6 – 8 and appro­pri­ate for all ages.
Lisa Sil­ver­man is direc­tor of Sinai Tem­ple’s Blu­men­thal Library in Los Ange­les and a for­mer day school librar­i­an. She is the for­mer chil­dren’s book review edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World.

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