Nine Spoons: A Chanukah Story
Kindergarten-Grade 2?As her grandchildren cluster around Oma on the last night of Chanukah, she tells them about a long-ago celebration when she was a young woman in a Nazi concentration camp. Her bunkmate, an artist named Raizel, declared that she could make a menorah for the children in the barracks if only she had nine spoons. Such utensils were a rare and precious commodity, but the interned women took risks and made sacrifices to obtain them. By twisting and bending the spoons together, Raizel fashioned a menorah, and the children experienced their own Chanukah miracle. This moving story, based on a real incident, is told in a simple and straightforward manner. The horrors of the camp are not graphically depicted, but even young children will gain an understanding of the deprivations faced by the inmates. However, some aspects of the narrative are vague, such as how Raizel managed to twist those spoons in one night, and how Oma ended up with the menorah. The illustrations are rendered in muted tones of blue, gray, and green; the prisoners are depicted as being gaunt but not emaciated.?EMCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.