Celebrate Hanukkah: With Light, Latkes, and Dreidels

by Deborah Heiligman

In Celebrate Hanukkah Deborah Heiligman welcomes readers to a holiday celebrated by Jewish communities around the world.

The vivid photography of National Geographic illustrates the joyous celebrations of Jewish people around the world—including Ghana, Uganda, India, Israel, Peru, the United States and Poland, as they light menorahs, spin dreidels, and make latkes.

The richly informative back matter details many facts, such as the story of U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, who brought a menorah and a dreidel on his Space Shuttle mission in 1993. Hoffman observed the traditional spinning of the dreidel, but wisely left the menorah unlit in the proximity of several thousand liters of rocket fuel! Also included are the author's sure-to-please latke recipe, Hanukkah blessings, and a Hanukkah song.

A note from Rabbi Shira Stern, the book's consultant, sets the holiday in its global religious and cultural context.

National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources.
Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.

Genres: Nonfiction, Picture Books, Jewish, Holiday, Childrens, Judaism

32 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 2006

About the author

Deborah Heiligman has been writing for children since she worked at Scholastic News soon after college. Since then she has written more than thirty books for children and teens. Her books include picture books, both fiction and nonfiction, and young adult nonfiction and fiction. Some titles: Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith, a National Book Award finalist; The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos, a Cook Prize Winner and Orbis Pictus honor; Intentions, a Sydney Taylor Award winner, and a picture book series about Tinka the dog. Her latest book is Vincent and Theo: The van Gogh Brothers. For more information please visit www.DeborahHeiligman.com

Reviews

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sophisticated, yet uncomplicated photographic storybook tells us about Hanukkah at its beginning and how it is celebrated in modern times. People and cultures from all over the world are highlighted.

Includes a Bibliography, Fact Sheet, Recipe for Latkes, Directions for Lighting the Menorah and Playing Dreidel, Web Sites to explore, a Glossary, a word about Hanukkah's meaning from Rabbi Shira Stern.

[Chrissy Shea Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

My kids have become very interested in world religions so for December I bought a series of books for all of us to learn from. This is very short but has good information on the basics of Judaism as well as a more detailed section written by a rabbi. Traditional activities like lighting a menorah and playing dreidel are discussed and a few simple recipes are provided.

Recommended for a very basic introduction.

[Shoshanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love these photo picture books about Jewish holidays! This is an earlier one by the author where they have photos from Jews living all around the world. I really appreciate the featuring of so many different diverse communities!

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a decent overview of the holiday & traditions.

[Pug · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative yet simple way to learn about Hanukkah. Nice amount of info for a beginner.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous Chanukah book with beautiful photos of the diverse celebrations of Chanukah world wide. It shows someone lighting a thirteen foot high menorah in Jacksonville, Florida, an Israeli soldier eating a jelly doughnut in the snow on Mt. Hermon, and children playing dreidl in Uganda. It's an enchanting visual international festival of Chanukah lights. Very interesting to me was the fact that the book begins by saying that ancient people celebrated Chanukah for eight days because that was the same number of days they celebrated Sukkot, their harvest festival. Heiligman does not explain this further, and she does not mention the miracle of the oil lasting eight days until the end of the book. When she does talk about it, she says that the story of the oil lasting eight days came about over time as people retold the Chanukah story. This is a departure from how we traditionally tell the story and it seems intriguing as it opens new avenues for embroidering and finding meaning. It gives a feeling of the holiday connected to the agrarian holidays of the Jewish year and I like it. But I have a recollection that celebrating Chanukah as an official holiday was allowed only if what was celebrated was G-d's miracle and not the Maccabees' military victory. But I am not certain of this but this point of departure is intriguing. The book has a very fresh, new "with it" feel. It think it's terrific.

[Mary Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heiligman has written an excellent series for National Geographic, exploring how many different holidays are celebrated around the world. In this volume, she begins with a simple, clear retelling of the Hanukkah story. But most of the book explores how Hanukkah is celebrated around the world, in places as such as Poland, South Korea, Uganda and Peru. The full-page photographs depict children and adults lighting candles, reciting prayer, and playing dreidels. I especially like how Heiligman uses "we" throughout - it provides the feeling of community and commonality. For example, next to a picture of a young boy in Uganda, Heiligman writes: "It is important to tell everyone about the miracle. We want to show everyone we are proud to be Jewish. We are glad that we are free to practice our religion." The text and photographs help us see that Jewish people around the world, living in many different countries, all celebrate the holiday in much the same way.

[Eva Seyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very brief book with a very long title. It is full of beautiful photographs of real children celebrating the holiday all over the world, with the story simply told. Great for early readers or reading to very young children.

What is interesting to me in learning about Hanukkah is that it has a very rich layering of meanings, the least important of which is the concept of it being Another Winter Festival. I think the most powerful and beautiful message is one that any believer should embrace, whether they celebrate the holiday or not, and that is this:

God does not need great numbers to work His purposes and preserve His faithful people (think of Gideon with his 300 men against thousands). We may be few in number, but with God on our side, what can't we accomplish?

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great series "Celebrate ...." by National Geographic that covers most main holidays celebrated around the world. I recommend this entire series as it covers the holidays throughout the world, giving students information about different traditions (and it has great photographs which the children love).

[Mar · Rating 4 out of 5]

These children's books are great for teaching about world religions. I like the information. I like the photos and the recipes. Makes explaining things in a class nice and easy when one can do it with pictures.

[Erin Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book I read with my 2nd graders during Social Studies is learning about Holidays around the world! It was very well written and held my students’ attention and the photographs were absolutely stunning!

[BookOfLife]

Hear an interview about Celebrate Hanukkah with author Deborah Heiligman on The Book of Life podcast's December 2006 episode at www.jewishbooks.blogspot.com.