Chil­dren’s

Noah’s Note­book: How God Saved Me, My Fam­i­ly, and the Ani­mals From the Flood

Allia Zobel Nolan; Lin­da Clear­wa­ter, illus.
  • Review
By – September 19, 2011
There are many books about Noah’s ark, and quite a few from the per­spec­tive of dif­fer­ent ani­mals, but the imag­ined jour­nal Noah kept gives a new point of view. Noah describes his con­ver­sa­tions with God, build­ing the ark, load­ing food for the ani­mals, and how the oth­er peo­ple made fun of him. Entries Six, Sev­en and Eight detail the rain and flood and life on the ark. Entry Nine, the final one, is about life after Noah and the ani­mals leave the ark. There is a short glos­sary and some inter­est­ing facts at the end of the text. There are sev­er­al clues that this book is writ­ten from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. In the glos­sary, Hebrew” is defined as the name giv­en to God’s cho­sen peo­ple who were also called Israelites.” Nei­ther moniker was used until much lat­er in time. Noah was not Jew­ish. In a pic­ture where Noah and his fam­i­ly are pray­ing, the peo­ple are kneel­ing and have their hands togeth­er. The book empha­sizes God’s love for Noah as opposed to his dis­ap­point­ment with what was wrong with the world. While the col­or­ful i llus­tra­tions are cute and full of ener­gy, the humor and puns (“What does Noah know-ah?”) of the text, as well as the wordi­ness, are for an old­er audi­ence than the illus­tra­tions. This book is an option­al choice at best, for ages 5 – 8.
Kathe Pinchuck, M.L.I.S., is the librar­i­an of Con­gre­ga­tion Beth Sholom in Tea­neck, New Jer­sey. She is cur­rent­ly the chair of the Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Award Com­mit­tee of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries.

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