Sheri Man­del presents us with an unusu­al and high­ly cre­ative approach to the joy of Shab­bat prepa­ra­tion. Many tod­dlers are enam­ored of trucks. The trucks seem so big, so sol­id, so use­ful, and are always on the way to far-off adven­ture-filled places. But even­tu­al­ly, even these friend­ly, acces­si­ble, appeal­ing trucks have to come home to pre­pare for shab­bat. How do they do it? They load up with all the deli­cious Shab­bat neces­si­ties and trans­port them to their spe­cial Shab­bat des­ti­na­tion. The pick­up deliv­ers grape juice and oth­er del­i­ca­cies; the tanker is filled with deli­cious chick­en soup; the exca­va­tor uses its long arm to braid chal­lah; the cement mix­er del­i­cate­ly swirls choco­late into the vanil­la cake. All the ingre­di­ents for a tasty, sat­is­fy­ing, tra­di­tion­al shab­bat meal are includ­ed. They are brought to a cen­tral loca­tion by col­or­ful, smil­ing, hap­py vehi­cles who are tired after their long work week and are now ready to par­tic­i­pate in a fab­u­lous shab­bat with all the trimmings.

This cheery book will great­ly appeal to chil­dren who love both trucks and Shab­bat; it is a per­fect blend of both their inter­ests. The con­cept and the illus­tra­tions can’t help but make their adults joy­ful­ly smile when they read the book aloud.

A short note is append­ed about the joys of spend­ing Shab­bat togeth­er with fam­i­ly or com­mu­ni­ty, with each par­tic­i­pant coop­er­at­ing in a suc­cess­ful effort to pro­vide a sat­is­fy­ing, cel­e­bra­to­ry meal.