Northern Lights: A Hanukkah Story

by Diana Cohen Conway

Paperback, 1994

Status

Available

Local notes

394.267 Con

Barcode

3656

Collection

Publication

Kar-Ben Publishing (1994), Paperback, 32 pages

Description

When a storm grounds their plane, a Jewish family celebrates Hanukkah with a Yupik Eskimo family and discovers they share many customs.

Awards

Sydney Taylor Book Award (Mass Import -- Pending Differentiation)

Physical description

32 p.; 10.02 x 7.99 inches

User reviews

LibraryThing member break
Living in sunny California it is easy to forget what real winter is about. In this situation Diana Cohen Conway's Northern Lights: A Hanukkah Story can come to the rescue. In it a Jewish girl is stranded for Hanuakkah in Alaska by the weather and is hosted by an Inuit family. There real cultural
Show More
exchange happens as she tells them the story of Hanukkah and they share with her bits of their culture, both material and literary. Meanwhile on every page we encounter stunning watercolor paintings by Shelly O. Haas, mostly in light blues and yellows, showing not just the two young girls developing friendship, but attempting to capture the atmosphere of northern lights. It is a simple story, for simple times with simple lesson about the value of multicultural sharing and discovering our similarities.
Show Less
LibraryThing member OptimisticCautiously
This book was terribly written and has no plot. No, I don't just mean in general but even for a kids' book. Nothing really happens (too much time is spent trying to establish why the plane went down and the choice of residence to stay - this could have been accomplished in three lines). Then Sarah
Show More
says hardly anything about Chanukah. Seriously, I counted: 5 pages as to why they can't go home yet 3 pages about Chanukah... Badly written, and far less descriptive of anything else in the story.

Then, to boot, it's not even a good illustration of the Northern Lights - which I don't think was properly connected to the holiday.

This book is so bad, I can't decide if I should keep it or even try to show it to kids. It doesn't offer anything to learn or see about either culture. Epic fail.
Show Less
LibraryThing member OptimisticCautiously
This book was terribly written and has no plot. No, I don't just mean in general but even for a kids' book. Nothing really happens (too much time is spent trying to establish why the plane went down and the choice of residence to stay - this could have been accomplished in three lines). Then Sarah
Show More
says hardly anything about Chanukah. Seriously, I counted: 5 pages as to why they can't go home yet 3 pages about Chanukah... Badly written, and far less descriptive of anything else in the story.

Then, to boot, it's not even a good illustration of the Northern Lights - which I don't think was properly connected to the holiday.

This book is so bad, I can't decide if I should keep it or even try to show it to kids. It doesn't offer anything to learn or see about either culture. Epic fail.
Show Less

Pages

32

Rating

(2 ratings; 3)
Page: 0.2545 seconds