Review: Sunday with Savta
Sunday with Savta by Wiley Blevins, illustrated by Eliahou Eric Bokobza Reycraft Books (imprint of Newmark Learning LLC) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org When the unnamed protagonist’s grandmother visits from Israel, Savta takes her grandson to the Statue of Liberty and to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan (unnamed in the text). Grandmother and grandson enter a series of rooms with paintings representing Jewish holidays and certain events in Israeli history; Savta identifies each holiday and shares a family story about it. Although he is planning to celebrate his bar mitzvah in Israel in less than 2 years, the boy seems to know nearly nothing about Jewish holidays. It strains credulity that an 11-year-old who plans on having a bar mitzvah would have so little familiarity with Jewish holidays and traditions. When the boy goes to Israel a year and a half later, we learn that his grandmother has died. He goes to visit her...