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Summary
Summary
Imagine James Marshall's The Stupids celebrating Hanukkah, and you'd get the Latke family!
Lucy Latke's family is just like yours or mine. Except that they're potato pancakes. And also, they are completely clueless. After lighting the menorah and gobbling the gelt, Grandpa Latke tells everyone the Hanukkah story, complete with mighty Mega Bees who use a giant dreidel to fight against the evil alien potatoes from Planet Chhh. It's up to the Latke family dog to set the record straight. (To start with, they were Maccabees, not Mega Bees ...) But he'll have to get the rest of the Latkes to listen to him first!
Author Notes
Alan Silberberg (www.silberbooks.com) is an award-winning author, cartoonist and children's TV creator who has worked with Nickelodeon and Disney. He's the author and illustrator of three previous middle grade novels including Milo: Sticky Notes & Brain Freeze , which won the Sid Fleishman Humor Award and is currently in development to become an animated TV series. Though he's been eating latkes for years, this is Alan's debut picture book.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The Latke family is celebrating the Festival of Lights. Yes, they're actual potato pancakes; no, they're not going to eat themselves (the menu calls for another traditional treat, jelly-filled donuts called sufganiyot). Grandpa Latke takes it upon himself to tell the story of "CHHA-nukah!" to Lucy Latke, but his narrative quickly goes off the rails: the heroes are yarmulke-wearing "mega-bees," not Maccabees; their enemy is "alien potatoes" instead of Antiochus; a dreidel is turned into a Trojan Horse; and the tongue twister "tattered tater tyrants" makes a totally gratuitous appearance. Thank goodness the family dog, Applesauce (also a latke), is on hand to set the story straight. Readers who like their humor broad and goofy will lap this up, and Silberberg (Pond Scum) makes it extra tasty with sprawling and genially messy cartooning that looks like it was created by someone hopped up on chocolate gelt. Ages 3-5. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
A family of anthropomorphized latkesMom, Dad, and Grandpa; little-sister Lucy; teenager Lex (Get out of my room!); and dog Applesaucedecorates the house, spins dreidels, and quibbles over the spelling of the winter holidays name. Then Grandpa tells the story of Hanukkah/Chanukah/CHHanukah, and things get really kooky. Did you know that Mega-Bees battled alien potatoes from Planet CHHHHH using a Trojan horselike dreidel? Amid frenetic silliness, theres helpful information: Applesauces speech-bubble interjections throughout set everyone straight, as does the back matter, which includes a glossary. The illustrations of the goggle-eyed potato pancakes are as cartoonish as one might expect; images of, say, tater tyrants shooting lasers are appropriately childlike. An absurd mishmash that miraculously works. shoshana flax (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A family of latkes prepares for Hanukkah.The members of the Latke family are all potato pancakes, even their dog, Applesauce. As Hanukkah approaches, daughter Lucy greets readers while her parents fry jelly doughnuts, her older brother holes up in his room being a teenager, and Grandpa disrupts the holiday by offering up an alternate spelling: "CHHA-nukah!" Applesauce explains that both can be correct. The usual celebrations continue, with all participating except for the teenager. And then Grandpa commences to tell the story of the holiday with his own twist. It was not the Maccabees who fought for freedom, it was bees: "MEGA-BEES!" Applesauce tries to correct this version, but Grandpa continues. The enemy was not Antiochus: It was "ALIEN POTATOES FROM PLANET CHHHHH!" And while the Maccabees were low on oil, the Mega-Bees are low on honey. Also in this revised account is a giant dreidel that calls to mind the Trojan horse and from which the Mega-Bees emerge to "[mash] those tater tyrants into tatters." Add the usual ingredients and you have, of course, "POTATO LATKES!" Silverberg's narration brings to mind a Borscht Belt routine that may be appreciated by some adult readers but is just as likely to cause confusion among its audience. His digital illustrations depict latkes that resemble brown blobs and only add to the general muddlement.Better stories about Hanukkah abound. (author's note, glossary) (Picture book. 3-6) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
i have anxious kids. So when it comes to tragic events, my general philosophy is to do whatever I can to shield them. But last month, when a shooting left 11 dead in a Pittsburgh synagogue, I was consumed by the news - and it felt hard not to share with them a version of what had happened. My daughters couldn't really fathom that a person would hate anybody, let alone want to hurt people simply for being Jewish, as we ourselves are. For my 5-year-old, this feeling of deep injustice quickly transformed into an outsize pride in the upcoming Hanukkah as her holiday, one that should get equal standing with Christmas. When we visited a drugstore the other day, she marched off to the aisle of holiday trinkets to assess the overall balance of sparkling tinsel to kitschy dreidels. At the bookstore, she eyed the children's section to ensure that all religions were on display (we live in Brooklyn: so, yes). While Hanukkah is probably the bestknown and most accessible Jewish holiday in America, it has never been a particularly important one religiously. It was elevated, starting in the 19 th century, because of its proximity to Christmas and the chance it provided for Jews in America to have their own year-end gift-giving celebration. Cleansed, usually, of its actual roots as a story about forced assimilation and a bloody rebellion, it has also become a favorite subject of children's books, something for the Jewish boys and girls whose houses Santa skips. But the inescapable dominance of Christmas makes it hard to write about the Jewish holiday in a way that doesn't feel as if it's merely responding to the Christian one. A whole genre of books points out that Josh gets eight nights of gifts to Johnny's single day - as if the point of a Hanukkah book is to make children feel O.K. about the evergreen trees and stuffed stockings they will not have. One of the best depictions of Jews on their own terms is the All-of-a-Kind Family series, the beloved books by Sydney Taylor, published between 1951 and 1978, about five sisters growing up in turn-of-the-century New York. Basing the books on stories from her own large family on the Lower East Side, Taylor first started writing the series when her daughter complained of seeing only Christian characters in the books she was reading. (I have a feeling our daughters would have gotten along.) It was also the first chapter book series to center on a Jewish family and their rituals and traditions, from the Sabbath preparations to how they celebrate Purim and Passover. So it's fitting that one of the best Hanukkah books in a long time is an adaptation of those beloved chapter books. The author Emily Jenkins teamed up with the Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky to create all-of-a-kind family haNUKKAH (Schwartz & Wades 40 pp., $17.99; ages 3 to 7), a picture book that lovingly and dutifully brings to life the family's cozy Lower East Side apartment, with Zelinsky's warm, close-up illustrations - and occasional dazzling cutaways - which evoke both the cramped quarters and the strong emotional bonds of the family. Set in 1912, Jenkins's story focuses on the youngest daughter, 4-year-old Gertie, who throws a tantrum one afternoon when she's not allowed to help make the family latkes. "No, Mäusele," her mother says, pointing to the potato parer: "It's too sharp." With pans of schmaltz bubbling, Gertie is carted off for a timeout in the cramped room she shares with her sisters. There she pouts and listens to the joyous festivities happening without her. Eventually invited out by her father, Gertie joins the warmth of her family and is offered the honor of lighting a candle on the menorah and placing it in the window. Somehow even young Gertie seems to understand that while in exile in her room, she is missing out on the rituals that have bound her people together. As the family moves to the table after lighting the candles, they sit down for dinner to enjoy their hard-earned latkes, which "taste of history and freedom, of love and crispy potato." As delightful as the book may be, it's a shame that many of the best Jewish children's books are still set in a bygone era on the Lower East Side, where children run through dense streets of Yiddish-speaking peddlers to light the Shabbos candles on Friday nights in their parents' tenements - a world that increasingly means very little to today's generation of Jewish kids. These books can turn a holiday like Hanukkah into an artifact in a museum, something that seems to have been practiced authentically only in the past as opposed to being alive and thriving today. another new book takes a totally different approach to the holiday. In meet the LATKES (Viking, 36 pp" $17.99; ages 3 to 5), the author and cartoonist Alan Silberberg tells the story of Hanukkah through a nice family of latkes. "They're just like you and me, except they're potato pancakes!" he explains. The teenage latke, Lex, is in his filthy room eating pizza while Mom and Dad are in the kitchen frying up jelly doughnuts - a traditional Hanukkah treat that's preferable to latkes if (as in this case) you happen to actually be a latke. Then Grandpa sits down with the little latke to recount the story of Hanukkah. "We celebrate this holiday thanks to the brave bees who buzzed and stung and fought to keep our people safe," Grandpa explains, taking some creative license with the story, turning the Maccabees into a hive of Mega-Bees who fought to save the Jewish temple and the lives of Jews who worshiped there. Enter some "alien potatoes" standing in for the army of King Antiochus, and a wise family dog named Applesauce, and you've got yourself a full-blown kooky comedy unpacking an ancient Talmudic tale. It's good to be reminded of the story of Hanukkah right now. The holiday invokes a tale of good guys and bad guys, of resistance, of a community holding on to its values. It's about darkness and light, and the hope that light can ultimately triumph. Even coming from the mouths of latkes, that's a story we all desperately need to hear. Deborah kolben is the editorial director at 70 Faces Media and the founder of Kveller.com, a Jewish parenting site.