Sammy Spider's First Hanukkah

Sylvia A. Rouss
Kar-Ben Publishing (1993)
ISBN 9780929371467
Reviewed by Leslie Granier and Nicholas Lopez (age 5) for Reader Views (10/07)

Sammy Spider and his mother live on the ceiling of the Shapiro family's house.  On the first night of Hanukkah, the Shapiros light one candle in the menorah and their son Josh is given a dreidel to spin.  Sammy likes to warm his cold feet by the candles.  He also enjoys watching the dreidel spin and asks his mother for one of his own.  His mother tells him that spiders spin webs, not dreidels.  Each consecutive night an additional candle is lit and Josh is given a different colored dreidel.  Sammy keeps asking his mother for a dreidel but gets the same response.  At the end of Hanukkah, Sammy is sad because he still has no dreidel of his own.  His mother presents him with a clever gift - eight different colored socks (the same colors as the dreidels Josh received) each with a little dreidel spun on the end.

Nicholas had no trouble recognizing the colors (except rose because it appeared to be the same color as brown) and liked seeing the names of the colors so he could learn how to spell them.  He thought it was funny that Sammy could wear eight socks that were all different colors and was happy his feet would not be cold anymore.  He was also happy that Sammy finally got the dreidel that he wanted.  He was not thrilled with the illustrations of the Shapiro family's faces.  (They were a little abstract).

“Sammy Spider's First Hanukkah” is a good source for teaching young children about colors and numbers and at the same time explaining certain Jewish traditions.

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