Chil­dren’s

The Art Les­son: A Shavuot Story

Alli­son & Wayne Marks; Annie Wilkin­son, illus.
  • Review
By – March 27, 2017

What could be bet­ter to bring home the mean­ing of a Jew­ish hol­i­day, espe­cial­ly the spring har­vest hol­i­day of Shavuot, which shows God’s gift of Torah to the Jew­ish peo­ple, than a book about mak­ing art! Shavuot is usu­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed either by stay­ing up one night of Shavuot study­ing Torah and/​or by cre­at­ing an art work. This book is about the mak­ing of paper cuts depict­ing var­i­ous aspects of the hol­i­day and the authors and illus­tra­tor show how it can be done. Grand­ma J is an art teacher who is total­ly pro­fi­cient in cre­at­ing paper cuts of mag­nif­i­cent design. She shares her skill and her love of art with her grand­daugh­ter, Shoshana, as they cre­ate spe­cial designs for Shavuot and skills for a life­time of cre­ativ­i­ty. The tech­nique is demon­strat­ed in a series of col­or­ful pic­tures illus­trat­ing the text. A nice touch is that the cre­ation of sev­er­al pieces are all learned as the read­er watch­es the process of the girl grow­ing up, who lat­er shares what she has learned with her own grand­daugh­ter. It is a col­or­ful book with many dimen­sions and filled with imag­i­na­tion. Don’t be sur­prised if it inspires cre­ativ­i­ty in the read­er, as well.

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 4 – 8.

Mar­cia W. Pos­ner, Ph.D., of the Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al and Tol­er­ance Cen­ter of Nas­sau Coun­ty, is the library and pro­gram direc­tor. An author and play­wright her­self, she loves review­ing for JBW and read­ing all the oth­er reviews and arti­cles in this mar­velous periodical.

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