FICTION

It’s Hanukkah!

by Andrea Posner-Sanchez (text) & illus. by Barry Goldberg
Random. (Sesame Street). Sept. 2023. 26p. Board $10.99. ISBN 9780593648926.
COPY ISBN
PreS–Elmo celebrates Hanukkah with the Bear family in this predictable Sesame Street story. Elmo goes to Baby Bear’s house for Hanukkah. They light the candles and sing the blessings (slightly out of order), eat latkes and sufganyot, play dreidel, and get presents. Each tradition is explained in brief, straightforward, pedantic text. Everyone is very polite and happy. The art is digitally done in layers and has a very slick look. This feels like someone has made a cartoon into a book, which is exactly what one might expect from an Elmo Hanukkah story. It does a perfectly acceptable job of explaining the basics of celebrating the holiday, though it makes no mention of the Hanukkah story or what anything represents.
VERDICT Entirely unremarkable. Libraries with big Elmo fans or that need a way to introduce Hanukkah in ways that will be an easy sell to non-Jewish readers may want to consider this mediocre offering.
Reviewed by Amy Lilien-Harper , Sep 29, 2023

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