Post­ed by Cha­va Lansky

With Thanks­giv­ing approach­ing it’s time to pull the clas­sic Jew­ish children’s nov­el Molly’s Pil­grim by Bar­bara Cohen off the shelf. This touch­ing tale tells the sto­ry of Mol­ly, a young girl who’s just moved with her fam­i­ly to the U.S. from Rus­sia to escape anti-Semi­tism and winds up as the only Jew­ish child in her third-grade class. She’s bul­lied in her new school for old-world clothes and accent. But when she’s asked to make a pil­grim doll as a Thanks­giv­ing assign­ment, she helps her peers to dis­cov­er that Thanks­giv­ing is real­ly a cel­e­bra­tion of all kinds of pilgrims.

This sweet nov­el for read­ers aged six to ten will give chil­dren a Jew­ish per­spec­tive on the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day while teach­ing them about diver­si­ty and accep­tance. The per­fect gift to keep the young ones busy at the Thanks­giv­ing table.

Hail­ing from Amherst, MA, Cha­va Lan­sky is a stu­dent at Barnard Col­lege, where she stud­ies Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and Dance, and interns for the Jew­ish Book Council.