Many peo­ple who love Leonard Cohen’s cel­e­brat­ed anthem, ​“Hal­lelu­jah” know lit­tle about its author. In their new pic­ture book, Ali­cia Jo Rabins and Gene Pen­don intro­duce the song’s author to a young audi­ence in the con­text of Cohen’s Jew­ish her­itage. Sim­pli­fy­ing some of the more dis­turb­ing and intense aspects of ​“Hallelujah’s” lyrics, they suc­ceed in pre­sent­ing an essen­tial and truth­ful pic­ture of the composition’s spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and its last­ing sig­nif­i­cance to a range of audiences.

Cohen’s child­hood was a com­pli­cat­ed mix of secu­ri­ty and ten­sion. Empha­siz­ing the warmth of Jew­ish rit­u­al and the deep roots of his iden­ti­ty, Rabins men­tions that Cohen’s grand­fa­ther was a rab­bi. While it is true that his mater­nal grand­fa­ther was a dis­tin­guished Tal­mu­dic schol­ar, the jux­ta­po­si­tion of this infor­ma­tion with a scene of Cohen’s live­ly syn­a­gogue implies that the old­er man offi­ci­at­ed there. Although he did not, he exert­ed a great influ­ence on the future song­writer. Rabins’s text tran­si­tions to explor­ing Cohen’s child­hood sad­ness, which com­pelled him to search for mean­ing in music and poetry.

Dis­till­ing the essence of Cohen’s artistry is a dif­fi­cult task for a children’s author. Rabins suc­ceeds in telling the truth about the mul­ti­cul­tur­al ele­ments that inspired Cohen, while also main­tain­ing that his Judaism remained at the core of his vision. He emerges as an appeal­ing fig­ure, a boy who grows to man­hood still strug­gling with con­flict­ing parts of his psy­che. Reserved and ambiva­lent, he even­tu­al­ly finds his voice and becomes a per­former whose songs res­onate because they ​“opened people’s hearts.” One of those songs, whose gen­e­sis was dif­fi­cult, was ​“Hal­lelu­jah.” Rabins describes how Cohen kept search­ing through hours of frus­tra­tion, until he found ​“the very last word and the very last chord.”

Pendon’s illus­tra­tions have a nos­tal­gic tone and dra­mat­ic inflec­tions. Scenes of Cohen’s fam­i­ly Shab­bat and his Mon­tre­al home frame the begin­nings of his quest for mean­ing in a spe­cif­ic set­ting. One felic­i­tous pair­ing of words and pic­tures has a table set with the tea and oranges that adult read­ers will rec­og­nize from his song ​“Suzanne,” while the win­dow looks out on a scene from his home city. The famous bird on a wire, col­ored in pas­tel vio­let and singing out­side of Cohen’s bed­room, is also iden­ti­fied as one more inspi­ra­tion for his songwriting.

Genius is not always rec­og­nized, and Pen­don por­trays an obtuse record exec­u­tive ges­tur­ing with an empath­ic thumbs down as Cohen hope­ful­ly presents his mag­num opus. But even­tu­al­ly his song’s uni­ver­sal­i­ty tri­umphs, pre­sent­ed here in inter­faith set­tings, around a camp­fire, and ser­e­nad­ing a cat from a mid-cen­tu­ry tele­vi­sion set. Rabins brings ​“Hal­lelu­jah” to a child’s lev­el of under­stand­ing, so that a song that refers to David and Bathshe­ba and Samson’s weak­ness for a

woman is trans­lat­ed as an acknowl­edge­ment of human imper­fec­tion. Love and anger can coex­ist, as Cohen learned from life itself, and from the bib­li­cal fig­ures who ani­mat­ed his imagination.

Hal­lelu­jah: The Sto­ry of Leonard Cohen is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed and includes an after­word with fur­ther bio­graph­i­cal information.