Customer Reviews

The Magic Dreidels: A Hanukkah Story

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Jacob refused to help prepare for Hanukkah, preferring instead to play with his new brass dreidel. He was sent for water and by accident, droped his dreidel into the well. Like the boy in Freya Littledale's Peter and the North Wind, another rendition of "The Tablecloth, the Donkey, and the Stick," Jacob met a magician, in this case a mischievous goblin who lived in the well and gave him a magic dreidel that spun out potato latkes.

Like Peter, Jacob also met a jealous old thief--here, the archetypal Fruma Sarah--who tricked him into giving her the dreidel. When he got home and told his mother the wonderful tale, his dreidel naturally no longer spun magic. Jacob returned to the well three times, each time receiving magic gifts from the friendly goblin. How he finally dealt with Fruma Sarah I cannot tell. But readers large and small will finish this book as joyfully as all the characters in it, including Fruma Sarah.

The illustrations, including a goat and various other floating creatures and objects, spin magic evocative of Chagall's eastern European blue. Alyssa A. Lappen

Read this book to my grand kids this year at our family Hanukkah party. They loved it. I loved it too. It was a nice precurser to playing the dreidle game.

Eric Kimmel has done it again! The author of the now-classic "Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins" adds another feather to his multi-plumed hat with this delightful adaptation of the old folktale "The Table, the Donkey, and the Stick." Marvelous for storytelling--the jewel-like illustrations are worth the price of admission--, this lovely tale is pure delight for children of all backgrounds and traditions

All of Jacob's family is getting ready for Hanukkah. But Jacob is not. When his family asks him to go and get some water from the well, he brought his dreidel and he lost it. He forgot to get the water. He got magic dreidels but he was tricked and somebody else ended up with them. But then he got a magic dreidel and the person who stole them gave them back because the magic dreidel had bad stuff in it. Then when he got the magic dreidels, they spun gelt and latkes. The family had to share with other families. It is a good book.