Chil­dren’s

The Dreams Come True Club

Tzivia Bloom
  • Review
By – August 3, 2012
The chap­ters of this book were orig­i­nal­ly short sto­ries writ­ten in Hebrew and pub­lished in Yeladim mag­a­zine. No glos­sary is pro­vid­ed to define any of the Hebrew terms the author uses, such as b’li ned­er, ta’anis dib­bur, and refuah sheleimah. Dan­ny, whose char­ac­ter is the most devel­oped, is the twelve-and-a-half year old nar­ra­tor. He and his four friends, Rafi, Gavi, Shu­ki, and Yoav, form a club to help oth­ers make their dreams come true. The author por­trays the boys as being very good and very respect­ful of their par­ents. When­ev­er they clash, they always work things out, usu­al­ly with Danny’s help. He is extreme­ly tact­ful, and seems unusu­al­ly mature for his age. He makes such com­ments as I don’t know about you, but I’m aller­gic to com­pli­ments. I blush every time some­body com­pli­ments me” and says that his sup­port­ive, under­stand­ing moth­er trusts me com­plete­ly, and knows that I would nev­er let myself get into trou­ble.” Although the set­ting is con­tem­po­rary Israel, the boys take the bus with­out fear to var­i­ous loca­tions, help­ing chil­dren make their dreams come true. In their first adven­ture, they trav­el to Tze­fat, to recov­er a pre­cious lost book that has been stolen from Shuki’s fam­i­ly and has mys­te­ri­ous­ly turned up in a book­store there. Next, for a smart class­mate called the Book­worm,” they trav­el to Netiv­ot in the Negev Desert to try to locate his favorite author. In anoth­er mis­sion, they attempt to locate a rare stamp for a child’s col­lec­tion. Through the boys’ adven­tures, Jew­ish val­ues of friend­ship, lov­ing one’s neigh­bor, and help­ing oth­ers are reflect­ed. The author writes in a humor­ous light tone and Ortho­dox boys ages 10 – 13 will enjoy get­ting to know Dan­ny and his friends.
Andrea David­son is the librar­i­an of The Tem­ple-Tifer­eth Israel in Beach­wood, Ohio. She holds an M.L.S. from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and is a for­mer mem­ber of the Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Awards Com­mit­tee. She enjoys try­ing out the books she reviews on the kids at the Tem­ple and on her grandchildren.

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