Hanukkah in Alaska

PreS-Gr 1—Originally published as a story in A Hanukkah Treasury (Holt, 1998), this book is only nominally about the holiday. Rewritten and packaged as a picture book, it features a nameless young narrator who describes what it's like living in urban Alaska, where winters are short on daylight and long on snow, and where a hungry moose might choose to eat the trees in your backyard. Several pages into the book, readers learn that it is Hanukkah, but even pretending to be a spinning dreidel in the snow doesn't stop this girl from worrying about the moose, particularly when he gets too close to her swing. On the last night of the holiday, the girl's father takes her outside to behold the aurora borealis, "Our very own Hanukkah Festival of Lights." The glorious colors remind her of melting candles on the menorah, but then once again the girl is distracted by the moose, and finally has the clever idea of luring him out of the yard. Acrylic and gouache illustrations beautifully display the shadowy, rich palette of winter in Alaska, tempered by the glow of candles and the northern lights.—Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library