This book is about a little girl named Sadie, who goes to a Hebrew school, taking place during Hanukkah time. Throughout the book, Sadie is super excited spinning dreidels, eating latkes, and lighting menorahs. Her teacher one day gives the class clay to make their own menorahs, along with different colors of paint. Sadie paints her menorah and as she is running to show her mom what she made, she trips and her menorah shatters across the floor. As she's in tears and her menorah is unfixable, her mother sees her shammash in the corner, the candle that lights the other candles on the menorah. Sadie's family decides to use her "Sadie's Super Shammash" this year, and all the years to come. The overall message is that even though Sadie was upset about her shattered menorah, her mom was there to help point out the good in the bad.Family and loved ones are always there to help us along the way.
This book was very informative on aspects of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. It described the different traditions held, such as latkes, dreidels, lighting the menorah, etc. It included information about menorahs, explaining that it had 8 candles, and that the shammash lit the candles on the menorah. Sadie showed such enthusiasm and engagement about celebrating Hanukkah and practicing her religion, by reading this book children could be more encouraged to embrace their culture and become more involved in celebrating with their families.
The pictures were creative and looked hand drawn, while representing the text, but the quality was poor. I thought the pictures were blurry, and when she was playing with dreidels or drawing menorahs, you could barely see what they would actually look like. I rated this a 3 because I thought that they could've better illustrated the different symbols of Hanukkah, because some of these terms would be new to many students. ( )