Chil­dren’s

Hid­ing Baby Moses

Judith L. Roth, Melanie Catal­do (illus.)

  • Review
By – March 22, 2021

Is there any­one who does not yearn to pro­tect baby Moses? The despair of his moth­er, the lone­li­ness and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of this lit­tle human adrift in his tiny bas­ket-world — no mat­ter how often the sto­ry is told, those feel­ings nev­er fade, even know­ing that the child is res­cued, raised in lux­u­ry, great­ly loved, and becomes a per­son­age of world eminence.

Judith L. Roth retells this sto­ry yet again, and the writ­ing and illus­tra­tions are riv­et­ing. The nar­ra­tor, Miri­am, Moses’ hero­ic and lov­ing old­er sis­ter, empha­sizes the trem­bling real­i­ty of her baby brother’s pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion and the joy at his res­cue. The enchant­i­ng illus­tra­tions empha­sise the Semit­ic beau­ty of the women — Jew­ish and Egypt­ian alike — and offer glimpses of life at that time. A reas­sur­ing psalm-like refrain set to music accom­pa­nies the text at cru­cial moments. At the close of the sto­ry, a well-writ­ten syn­op­sis of the Bib­li­cal sto­ry sur­round­ing the life of Moses fills in many details.

Award-win­ning jour­nal­ist and free­lance writer, Helen Weiss Pin­cus, has taught mem­oir writ­ing and cre­ative writ­ing through­out the NY Metro area to senior cit­i­zens and high school stu­dents. Her work has been pub­lished in The New York Times, The Record, The Jew­ish Stan­dard, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. She recent­ly added Bub­by” to her job description.

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