Chil­dren’s

What Am I? Passover

Anne Mar­garet Lewis; Tom Mills, illus.
  • Review
By – August 7, 2012

A sim­ple rid­dle for­mat intro­duces young chil­dren to the sym­bols and con­cepts of Passover. Descrip­tive clues such as I am a mix­ture of apples, nuts, and a lit­tle wine” appear on the left-hand page. In a larg­er font on the right side, the refrain asks, What am I? What could I be?” Open the stur­dy fold to reveal the answer in the illus­tra­tion and the text: I am charoset on the Seder plate. That’s me!” The egg, pil­low, can­dles, kid­dush cup, Hag­gadah, karpas, frogs, matzah, afikomen, and the prophet Eli­jah are all pre­sent­ed in this straight­for­ward man­ner with some items receiv­ing an addi­tion­al expla­na­tion (“I remind every­one of the mor­tar the enslaved Jew­ish peo­ple used to build the pyra­mids.”) The large, bold, dig­i­tal illus­tra­tions depict­ing a con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish fam­i­ly are cheer­ful, cute, and invit­ing. Tod­dlers already famil­iar with the hol­i­day obser­vances will be delight­ed by this easy inter­ac­tive guess­ing game. This is a part of the My Look and See Hol­i­day Book” series that also includes Hal­loween, Christ­mas, and East­er; hope­ful­ly the pub­lish­er will con­tin­ue this suc­cess­ful series with addi­tion­al Jew­ish hol­i­days. Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 2 – 5.

Rachel Kamin has been a syn­a­gogue librar­i­an and Jew­ish edu­ca­tor for over twen­ty-five years and has worked at North Sub­ur­ban Syn­a­gogue Beth El in High­land Park, IL since 2008, cur­rent­ly serv­ing as the Direc­tor of Life­long Learn­ing. A past chair of the Syd­ney Tay­lor Book Award Com­mit­tee and past edi­tor of Book Reviews for Chil­dren & Teens for the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries News & Reviews, her arti­cles and book reviews appear in numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions. She has been a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Library Association’s Sophie Brody Book Award Com­mit­tee since 2021.

Discussion Questions