Chil­dren’s

Zig­gy’s Big Idea

Ilana Long; Rasa Joni, illus.
  • Review
By – June 6, 2014

Zig­gy loves to come up with cre­ative new ideas. Every day, he looks around the shtetl won­der­ing what he can invent or improve upon. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, none of his ideas work out quite the way he hopes they will. Then one day, after a vis­it to the bak­ery, Zig­gy has his best idea yet. The bak­er makes won­der­ful, fluffy buns but the cen­ters are always under­done. Zig­gy’s cre­ative mind gets to work and the hole-in-the-mid­dle bagel is born. He even thinks up a great way to stack and trans­port his new invention.

Whim­si­cal, col­or­ful dou­ble page spreads with a com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty accom­pa­ny the amus­ing text. A bagel recipe is includ­ed along with back­ground infor­ma­tion about the his­to­ry of the bagel as is a fun fact” about bagels hav­ing been brought on a space shut­tle mis­sion to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Station. 

Clev­er­ly writ­ten and tasti­ly pre­sent­ed, this sweet book is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed for ages 5 – 9.

Michal Hoschan­der Malen is the edi­tor of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s young adult and children’s book reviews. A for­mer librar­i­an, she has lec­tured on top­ics relat­ing to lit­er­a­cy, run book clubs, and loves to read aloud to her grandchildren.

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