Saturday, April 9, 2011

A Tale of Two Seders {Book Review}

"Families are like charoset. Each one is tasty in its own way."

A Tale of Two Seders (Passover)Mindy Avra Portnoy (famous for her book "Ima on the Bima," by the way, the inspiration for my blog's title) wrote this sweet story, A Tale of Two Seders, about a little girl who is the child of a divorce. The unnamed little girl tells the story of her six seders since her parents' divorce, each one different and each one with a different variety of charoset... which, I agree, is a good indicator of the quality of a seder!

Divorce is not good or easy but this book seems to be a gentle way to help a child of divorce see that he or she is not alone in having a family that is divided.

This is certainly a book for a very specific audience, but I think it's an important one, and kudos to Kar-Ben Publishing for adding it to their catalog. So many wonderful books about the Passover seder show family structures that don't apply to every child and every home. This book opens the door to different family narratives.

Afikomen Mambo (Passover)
Are you looking for a few good Passover books? Kar-Ben has a great selection in their catalog, including Afikomen Mambo, a book form of one of our favorite Passover songs.

What's your favorite Passover book for children? I shared my favorite Passover books for kids a few years back.

Full disclosure: I received a review copy of this book (which I'm going to keep on my rabbi-shelves) last year and I got distracted and didn't review it. I held onto it until now and here I am! So many thanks to Kar-Ben for the review copy!

1 comment:

Caroline said...

Wow... I wish this book had been around 20 years ago! I think my two favorite sedarim from childhood were when my mother rented (!) a huge, bulky camcorder so that we could record the seder--hilarity ensued...along with footage of relatives now long gone--and the year we went to a sefardi seder (awesome charoset) and my dad pointed out each item and told us which we could eat and which we could not.