Chil­dren’s

The Kvetch Who Stole Hanukkah

Bill Berlin and Susan I. Berlin; Peter Welling, illus.
  • Review
By – September 1, 2011
The laws of par­o­dy prob­a­bly allow this book to be pub­lished, but the authors owe the entire struc­ture and plot of this Hanukkah book to Dr. Seuss and this fact is only men­tioned mild­ly on the front flap. Action packed, quirky, humor­ous illus­tra­tions and a superb def­i­n­i­tion of a kvetch are not enough to dis­tract from a heavy hand­ed moral tale deliv­ered in painful­ly stretched rhymes. The chil­dren in Oyville awake to find all their meno­rahs are gone; the read­er knows the kvetch stole them and took them to the top of the hill”. Oyville’s chil­dren, deep­er into meno­rahs and hol­i­day his­to­ry than gifts or gelt, under­stand after just one inci­dent that the kvetch hates Hanukkah because of an inner fear: Maybe you’d rather see things as bleak because some­where inside, you feel fright­ened and weak.” Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly primed, the young­sters right his prob­lem with plat­i­tudes on social jus­tice, char­i­ty and hope. Every­one and every­thing beams at the end: chil­dren, parents,kvetch and espe­cial­ly all the meno­rahs heaped on an Oyville hill with the presents. Clear­ly the authors are try­ing for a Jew­ish take on The Grinch Who Stole Christ­mas, but regret­ful­ly, they took on the mas­ter of the genre and missed the mark. For ages 4 – 8.

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.

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