Queen of the Hanukkah Dosas is family, culture, picture fun for 3 and up

Queen of the Hanukkah Dosas is a picture book that’s geared at elementary school students. It’s also geared to brothers or sisters who have a younger sibling that is always climbing things. Sadie is a 3 or 4 year old girl that loves climbing, songs and eating. The book is told from the perspective of her older brother, who is around 9 and really looking forward to making and eating dosas.

All week he tries to warn his parents that Sadie will ruin Hanukkah by climbing something. She escapes from her crib with ease and gets up in the counters without a problem. Sure enough at the Indian Market, Sadie finds a pyramid shaped structure of coconut milk cans and easily scales to the top. Her grandmother can’t get her down when the little boy starts ad-libbing a song that he’s been learning in Hebrew School.

It goes to the tune of the dreidel song, but he switches up the words to where they’re making a dosa, made out of dal. As he starts to sing, Sadie climbs down. When they get home and start making the dosas guess what Sadie does? When their cousins arrive they put the Happy Hanukkah sign on the door, but accidently lock themselves out.

The dosas are cooking in the kitchen and grandmother is sleeping on the sofa, but thankfully there is a window open that’s just big enough for someone small to climb through. Queen of the Hanukkah Dosas has vocabulary that most second graders will be able to fully read. The story is just long enough to be a good-night book, but could also spend time in the kitchen because there’s a recipe for dosas and sambar on the back page.

It’s a Hanukkah book that talks about family, relationships and making the most out of this special time of year-even when you think that elements in your own house will make things miserable.  Queen of the Hanukkah Dosas is written by Pamela Ehrenberg, illustrations by Anjan Sarkar and published by Macmillan Publishing.