Chil­dren’s

Jodie’s Passover Adventure

Anna Levine; Kse­nia Topaz, illus.
  • Review
By – April 24, 2012

Dur­ing the week of Passover, Jodie’s cousin Zach vis­its Jodie and her fam­i­ly. The sib­lings all want to spend time with Zach and argue about who is to enter­tain him. Jodie suc­ceeds in per­suad­ing Zach, who is ini­tial­ly fear­ful, to accom­pa­ny her on an arche­o­log­i­cal adven­ture to Hezekiah’s Tun­nel. Places in Jerusalem are allud­ed to with illus­tra­tions and brief his­tor­i­cal descrip­tions. Jodie helps Zach over­come his fears through her log­ic-based expla­na­tions. With the help of a flash­light Jodie has received for find­ing the afikomen, the cousins solve the rid­dle of the mid­dle” point­ed out by Jodie’s arche­ol­o­gist father at the begin­ning of their tour; the orig­i­nal tun­nel was dug from two start­ing points with the work­ers meet­ing in the mid­dle. Dou­ble-page illus­tra­tions move the sto­ry from the start of Jodie’s explo­ration out­side the tun­nel where no clear entrance is indi­cat­ed, to a wall that shows mark­ings put there by the orig­i­nal builders and then back to the out­side where they are met by a burst of sun­light. With­out any knowl­edge of Jerusalem, chil­dren may be over­whelmed by the many unfa­mil­iar places men­tioned in the text. The sto­ry itself is loose­ly relat­ed to Passover in that it occurs dur­ing the hol­i­day, a Passover pic­nic is packed and King Hezeki­ah once held a very large seder. The tun­nel, itself, the main focus of the sto­ry, is not relat­ed to the hol­i­day. Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 6 – 9.

Dro­ra Arussy, Ed.D., is an edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tant who spe­cial­izes in inte­grat­ing Jew­ish and sec­u­lar stud­ies, the arts into edu­ca­tion, and cre­ative teach­ing for excel­lence in Jew­ish edu­ca­tion. She is the moth­er to four school-age chil­dren and has taught from pre-school through adult. Dro­ra is an adjunct pro­fes­sor of Hebrew lan­guage at Drew University.

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