Best children’s books for Chanukah

Colby Jack, aka CJ, is the key character in The Mouse Who Loved Latkes (by Joy Nelkin Wieder, Kar-Ben). He has never tasted Chanukah food until a terrifying new family moves into the apartment where he lives in the walls. Our first glimpse of the intruders is, cleverly, from CJ’s eye level – a sinister furry leg emerging from a crate marked “Katz”. Yes, the incomers are cats – apron-wearing, cutlery-using cats. CJ is enticed out of hiding by the Katzes’ delicious doughnut crumbs and is coaxed into joining the cats to make festive fried potato cakes. He’s also introduced to a dreidel (and makes a cutely disgusted face when licking reveals it isn’t a lollipop), gelt and a chanukiah (no, CJ, not a mousetrap). And CJ learns that cats and mice can be friends, for a special and hilarious Jewish reason. Age two up.

More cats celebrate Chanukah in the slightly bumpily rhyming board book Happy HanukKAT by Jessica Hickman, illustrated by Elissambura (Kar-Ben). These adorably rounded, fluffy-looking cats wear Chanukah jumpers with party hats or kippot and are “just like you and me”, but not quite. While one cat uses a slotted spoon to fry the latkes, another is grating the potato with its claws, a fun detail. Despite the brevity of the book, Hickman fits in not only dreidels and gelt but the brave Maccabees (with the cats imagining themselves wielding shields in battle). Age two up.

A cat also plays a role in The Extraordinary Dreidel, by Devorah Omer, translated by Shira Atik and illustrated by Aviel Basil (Green Bean Books). Uncle Haim makes Gil and Nurit a huge wooden dreidel with a secret compartment. But what should they keep inside? The answer is decided in a sweet and surprising way, by the family pet. Age two up.

A seasonal, although not specifically Chanukah, fable, A Winter’s Morning by Angélique Leone & Grégoire Solotareff (Post Wave) is the story of a small wolf who lives alone, until he finds a teddy, mislaid in the snow. Leone and Solotareff conjure up an otherworldly, enchanted feeling as we watch the pair play together. But the spell is broken when – heartstopping moment – the girl who lost the teddy comes back. What happens next is ingenious, transforming the meaning of the whole story. Age three up.