Chil­dren’s

Angel Secrets

Miri­am Chaikin; Leonid Gore, illus.

  • Review
By – August 3, 2012

The author’s fas­ci­na­tion with angels con­tin­ues in this third book of sto­ries about them that she has writ­ten for chil­dren. Like the oth­er two, it is a col­lec­tion of mod­ern midrash — tales inspired not only by the Bible but also by Ginzberg’s Leg­ends of the Bible, Luzzatto’s The Way of God, and works of Jew­ish mys­ti­cism. They are all embell­ished by Chaikin’s own fer­tile spir­i­tu­al imag­i­na­tion. Envi­sion­ing a Heav­en that vibrates with God’s holy pres­ence and resounds with love and song, Chaikin pop­u­lates it with angels of every sort whose pur­pose is to be active in the affairs of the world: Guardians, Mes­sen­gers, Earth Walk­ers, Alpha­bet angels, Lawyers, Angels of For­get­ful­ness, and Scribes. All but one of the sto­ries is about a par­tic­u­lar class of angel and the jobs they do — or don’t want to do — on earth. The excep­tion is a folk­tale­like sto­ry in which a poor woman and her daugh­ter are vis­it­ed by the Angel Goral­nik (whose name is not explained) and giv­en a mag­ic stone that not only pro­vides them with food but leads them to the bar­ren city of Jerusalem, which they are then empow­ered to trans­form. Writ­ten in a style that is rich with both humor and fan­ci­ful imagery, each sto­ry is illus­trat­ed by one of Leonid Gore’s impres­sion­is­tic paint­ings, sim­i­lar to those that he cre­at­ed for Sue Alexander’s Behold the Trees (Scholas­tic, 2001). An author’s note about the sto­ries, an intro­duc­to­ry sto­ry that sets the stage, and an append­ed list of sources and ref­er­ences add con­text and cred­i­bil­i­ty to a love­ly col­lec­tion. Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 9 – 12.

Lin­da R. Sil­ver is a spe­cial­ist in Jew­ish children’s lit­er­a­ture. She is edi­tor of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries’ Jew­ish Val­ues­find­er, www​.ajl​jew​ish​val​ues​.org, and author of Best Jew­ish Books for Chil­dren and Teens: A JPS Guide (The Jew­ish Pub­li­ca­tion Soci­ety, 2010) and The Jew­ish Val­ues Find­er: A Guide to Val­ues in Jew­ish Children’s Lit­er­a­ture (Neal-Schu­man, 2008).

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