Chil­dren’s

Mat­zo Frogs

Sal­ly Rosen­thal; David Shel­don, illus.
  • Review
By – March 30, 2015

Min­nie acci­den­tal­ly spills the mat­zo ball soup she has made that morn­ing for Shab­bat din­ner and, with a sick friend to vis­it, she has no time to make a new batch. Though she doesn’t know it, she is going to get some help from the lit­tle frogs who live in the pond next door. Recall­ing the fairy tale of the Shoe­mak­er and the Elves,” in this debut pic­ture book, it is frogs who enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pitch in to do a mitz­vah for their kind­heart­ed neigh­bor. The frogs work togeth­er to make the soup. One of them sculpts a dozen mat­zo balls, as well as a frog made of mat­zo. When Min­nie returns home, she is shocked to find a warm pot of heav­en­ly-smelling mat­zo ball soup sit­ting on the stove. Only when she sees the mat­zo frog in the soup does she real­ize who has saved her Sab­bath din­ner. Shel­don, the illus­tra­tor of more than eighty books for chil­dren, has filled the pages with live­ly bright green frogs, clear­ly delight­ed to have been able to per­form this act of kindness. 

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 3 – 7.

Susan Kan­tor was a senior writer/​editor for Girl Scouts of the USA, a chil­dren’s book edi­tor, and a past judge for the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards in the illus­trat­ed children’s book cat­e­go­ry. She is a writer and a docent at the Rubin Muse­um in New York City, where she leads pub­lic and pri­vate tours.

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