Pic­ture a round clay pitch­er with goo­gly eyes and a smi­ley face and you will have an idea of the hero of this slight Hanukkah sto­ry. Pini is filled with pure olive oil and sent to the Beit HaMik­dash in Jerusalem, where he expects to be used for pour­ing oil into the Gold­en Meno­ra. Instead, he arrives as Greek sol­diers are defil­ing the Tem­ple and smash­ing all of ​“his friends,” the oth­er pitch­ers. He saves him­self by rolling away into a dark cor­ner and sur­vives to wit­ness the recap­ture of the Tem­ple by the Mac­cabees. One of the Kohan­im finds Pini, of course, and pours the oil he holds — ​“just enough to burn for one day” — into the Meno­ra. Then a mir­a­cle hap­pens: Pini fills up with oil, again and again, for eight days — ​“the most beau­ti­ful mir­a­cle of all!” Anthro­po­mor­phized objects like Pini have fall­en out of favor in children’s lit­er­a­ture but young chil­dren will have no trou­ble under­stand­ing the mir­a­cle of Hanukkah when it is pre­sent­ed in this way. The large illus­tra­tions are clear but rather monot­o­nous, under­scor­ing the book’s pri­mar­i­ly ped­a­gog­ic val­ue. For ages 4 – 7.