Chil­dren’s

Shiku­fitzky 5

Shifra Glick
  • Review
By – November 2, 2011
The lat­est entry into this humor­ous series about the Shiku­fitzky fam­i­ly with four chil­dren is a win­ner. The rela­tion­ships between sib­lings are real, some­times respect­ful to each oth­er, but just as often not. A col­or­ful mix of very short and sim­ple sto­ries is pre­sent­ed in a com­ic strip for­mat about children’s play at home and in their day-to-day life in school. Charm­ing episodes are includ­ed that both man­age to put a new spin on every­day life as part of a fam­i­ly and to teach kids about their own foibles in an amus­ing way. The chil­dren I gave it to gig­gled out loud as I read to them and as they read inde­pen­dent­ly. Sto­ries are col­or-cod­ed to make it clear that a new sto­ry begins when the col­or of the bor­der changes. The illus­tra­tions are boxed com­ic strip style and are in full col­or. Children’s names are Hebrew or Yid­dish and the illus­tra­tions show girls in skirts and boys with kip­pot, so this book is clear­ly mar­ket­ed for Ortho­dox read­ers. The real­i­ty of the per­son­al­i­ties and events will make this an appro­pri­ate read also for non-Ortho­dox chil­dren, keep­ing in mind that there are sev­er­al Hebrew words used in con­ver­sa­tion, such as Suc­cos, Hag­ga­da and Sha­lach Manos. For ages 6 – 10.
Shelly Feit has an M.L.S. and a Sixth-year Spe­cial­ist’s Cer­tifi­cate in infor­ma­tion sci­ence. She is the library direc­tor and media spe­cial­ist at the Mori­ah School in Engle­wood, NJ.

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