Happy Perfect Picture Book Friday, dear friends. And hold onto your hats – because today’s featured book is like a dozen books in one! That’s right! It’s a treasury of stories, recipes, crafts, and more – for Jewish holidays throughout the year. And the art by author/illustrator Jane Breskin Zalben is absolutely delightful!

BENI’S TINY TALES: Around the World in Jewish Holidays

Written and illustrated by Jane Breskin Zalben

Published by Christy Ottaviano (August 8, 2023)

Ages: 4-8

Themes: Jewish holidays, family activities, diversity

Synopsis: From Amazon:
Join Beni and his family as they celebrate a year in Jewish Holidays, including all their favorite craft activities, recipes, songs, and stories for each occasion. The perfect gift book that gives all year long.

Chronicling a full year of Jewish festivities—from Rosh Hashanah through Shavuot, with every momentous occasion in between—this one-of-a-kind treasury includes homespun family stories, origin notes, craft activities, songs, and recipes for each holiday.  With ideas on how to make masks for Purim, recipes to bake fresh honey-dipped challah to mark the new year, and so much more, this interactive holiday collection begs to be revisited again and again.
 
Beautifully crafted and with the right balance of factual details interspersed with fictional stories, this Jewish treasury is a welcome introduction to each holiday in the calendar year, and it is all told through the lens of Beni’s bear family. For parents who grew up reading Beni’s Family Treasury and Beni’s Family Cookbook, the family tradition lives on in this much anticipated compendium for contemporary readers.

“Mouthwatering recipes, activities, and songs round out the chapters…. Young readers and their grown-ups will find much to savor here.” —Kirkus Reviews

Why I Love This Book:
1. I love that this book has so many different layers – the stories of Beni’s bear family, the many different Jewish holidays and the how and why they are celebrated, fun craft activities and great recipes that everyone can enjoy!
2. I love the glorious art – the illustrations throughout the book are delightful and captivating – even the end papers engage the reader!
3. The publisher did not stint when it came to this book – the heavy glossy pages will survive many readings and the handling of young children – and the print is large enough for even my old eyes to see it – this s a quality book from cover to cover!

The book has received praise and write-ups from many, including:
ALA: https://journals.ala.org/index.php/cal/article/view/8109/11274
Betsy Bird: https://afuse8production.slj.com/2023/07/06/celebrating-jewish-holidays-all-year-round-an-interview-with-jane-zalben-about-benis-tiny-tales/

Usually, I share a craft activity with every Perfect Picture Book Friday post, but because this books is chockful of crafts and recipes – and because author/illustrator Jane Zalben is so generous, we have crafts AND recipes!!!

When the kids are home from school over the holidays, we often scramble for things to do with them. But with BENI’S TINY TALES, you’ll be scrambling no more!

When my first child was born, we moved from NYC to a small town in Connecticut. I’ve mentioned before how the backyard had 100 blueberry bushes…and the front yard had three huge old maple trees that we tapped for sap to make maple syrup several times while our children were growing up. It was a great experience…and Jane documents a similar time for Beni and his bear family.

To be honest, I have to admit that I don’t buy every book that I review…there are just too many of them…and my bookcases are already bursting at the seams – but when I saw the wealth of information and the quality of the illustrations, I couldn’t help myself – I hope you will all feel the same way because beautiful books like BENI’S TINY TALES need our help.
What can we do?
We can:
Buy a copy for ourselves or a friend
Review the book
Place the title on your Goodreads WANT TO READ shelf
Tell friends about the book (on social media, please!)
Ask our local library to purchase copies for their collection

I’ve bought the book, placed it on my Goodreads shelf, and reviewed it on Amazon.
And I’ll be sharing on Facebook and Twitter.
I hope you will find at least one way to help spread the word about this glorious book.

And I hope you all have a beautiful weekend! I’ve started reaching out to gather prizes for #50PreciousWords…yes, can you believe it…March will be here before you know it. And, dear blog followers, you are the first to know that we already have all of our judges from last year back again. My grateful thanks to Maria Marshall, Pamela Courtney, Carmen Castillo Gilbert, Shirin Shamsi, Leah Moser, Amber Bouchard, and Diane Tulloch for agreeing to this huge task of reading all of the stories (last year there were 756), and meeting multiple times to decide on the 50+ prize winners and 200+ Honorable Mentions. I’ve also heard from the first of the prize donors…we ALREADY have SEVERAL EDITORS AND AGENTS who will give feedback and/or submission opportunities.

Are you getting excited? AWESOME!!! But before you forget, please share this post on your social media and buy a copy of BENI’S TINY TALES!