Hanukkah moon

by Deborah da Costa

Other authorsGosia Mosz (Illustrator)
Paper Book, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

H HN E DAC

Publication

Minneapolis, MN : Kar-Ben Pub., c2007.

Description

Juvenile Fiction. Picture Book Fiction. HTML: When Isobel is invited to Aunt Luisa??s for Hanukkah, she??s not sure what to expect. Aunt Luisa has recently arrived from Mexico. ??At Aunt Luisa??s you??ll get to celebrate the Hanukkah Moon,? Isobel's father promises. Isobel??s days at Aunt Luisa??s are filled with fun and surprises ?? a new camera, a dreidel piñata filled with sweets, and a mysterious late night visit to welcome the luna nueva, the new moon that appears on Hanukkah. An unusual Hanukkah story with a multi-cultural focus, this title celebrates a little-known custom of the

Library's rating

Barcode

3659

Awards

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

Language

User reviews

LibraryThing member KristenCollins
Summary
Hanukkah Moon is a book about a little girl named Isobel. She is going to celebrate Hanukkah with her Aunt Luisa who just arrived from Mexico. Isobel is worried about the visit and is unsure on what to expect. She isn't sure that Aunt Luisa will not celebrate Hanukkah they way they do. Her
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father tells her it will be even more special because she will get to celebrate the Hanukkah Moon. Hanukkah Moon? Isobel has no idea what that even is. While she is there she realizes that all though Aunt Luisa does do things a little differently it doesn't mean that they are wrong and they are actually really fun! The visit is full of surprises and she gets to see for herself what exactly the Hanukkah moon is!

Personal Reaction
I really enjoyed this book as it gave me a little knowledge about I culture know nothing about. I learned new things and I think it would be a great addition to my classroom library.

Classroom extension
This would be a great book to have around the holidays. It is perfect for children who celebrate Hanukkah instead of Christmas.
This book would also be a good book to share with the entire class to give them insight into a different culture that many of them probably know nothing about.
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LibraryThing member AbigailAdams26
Isobel's Hanukkah visit to her Aunt Luisa, newly arrived from Mexico, provides both a heart-warming family reunion, and an educational foray into holiday traditions previously unknown to the young American girl, in this lovely picture-book from Deborah Da Costa and Gosia Mosz. With a homemade
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hanukkiah (the Hanukkah menorah) inspired by Noah's Ark, greetings and songs in Spanish - Feliz Januca, rather than "Happy Hanukkah," Trompo, trompo, trompo, lo hice de barro, rather than "Dreidel, dreidel, driedel. I made it out of clay" - a driedel-shaped pinata to break, and (most of all) a party to celebrate Hanukkah Rosh Chodesh - the Hanukkah new moon - Isobel finds that Aunt Luisa doesn't celebrate the Festival of Lights like anyone else she knows, and that this is a wonderful thing!

I enjoyed Hanukkah Moon a great deal, finding it both an engaging family story, in which a girl and her aunt become better friends, and an educational exploration of holiday traditions with which I was unfamiliar. Like Isobel, I had never heard of Rosh Chodesh before, or the tradition that each new moon is a woman's holiday, to honor the women who refused to contribute their gold, when the (male) Israelites were building a golden calf to worship. The illustrations, done by Polish artist Gosia Mosz - who, sadly, does not appear to have any other titles available in English - are simply beautiful, with an appealing color palette (lots of purples and yellows) and a distinctive, stylized sensibility that is very expressive. I liked the faces here (and Aunt Luisa's cat, Paco!), and I liked the composition of each two-page spread. All in all, this is a wonderful book, one with great narrative and illustrative appeal, and one which I recommend to any young reader looking for quality Hanukkah titles.
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LibraryThing member alnakka.net
Hanukkah Moon is a quite well-written book with beautiful illustrations. It also shows some cultural diversity. But I was hoping for *Jewish* cultural diversity too when I ordered this book. Instead, where Hanukkah Moon could quite naturally have given the reader some insight into Sephardi Judaism,
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it comes through as a Yiddish-Ashkenazi story with dreidelech, latkes, yarmulkes on a bit of generic Spanish backdrop. What a great chance lost....
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LibraryThing member KinseyHill
Isabel is unsure of what Hanukkah is so she is invited to go to her aunts to learn about the tradition's that hanukkah has and stays up late so she can welcome the new moon.

ISBN

9781580132442

Other editions

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