Milk and Honey: A Year of Jewish Holidays

excellent for school aged children to learn all about the holidays and what to expect during the whole year of celebrations

Great book- great service! Thank you!

I am not Jewish, so I apologize in advance if any of my comments seem ignorant. I am only just getting into Jewish customs and religion.I love Jane Yolen's stories, so I picked up this book for a Christian homeschooling unit on Jewish holidays. I appreciated the easy narration style and illustrations of this book. But I was a little surprised when I read the Pesach chapter (the only holiday I have read a lot of kids' books on). She said that the children were supposed to steal the afikomen and hide it from the adults, who would hunt for it? And that that represented the little bit of child within all of us? I had never heard that before, so I wasn't sure about that (although the idea that some families would practice the holiday differently makes sense).I was also surprised to see her illustration of the seder table with turkey/chicken, pastries, and other things on it alongside the seder plate. Is that correct? It's a big feast?I think the only thing that bothered me though, as a Christian, was the story in her Yom Kippur section where the moral is that only adults need to weep and repent of their sins. The story she includes says "But children, who have not sinned at all, should not be left to cry." I am not sure whether this represents true Jewish theology, but that is definitely not a message appropriate for Christians. While I certainly believe that children should be dealt with gently and carefully in the area of sin and conviction (or any other adult topic), they should not be taught that they are above sin and accountability. Or that they are better than adults in this way.

I wanted to pass on a special note about the music included in this book. This book collects great arrangements of some very well known Jewish holiday songs. For example there is a nice English language version of Chad Gadya (One little goat). The music contains grand staff piano notation along with chord markings a guitarist could use for accompaniment.I think the book strikes a nice balance between describing how certain holidays might be celebrated by orthodox alongside notes that not everybody does things in these ways.