Review: My Body Can
My Body Can
By Laura Gehl, illustrated by Alexandra Colombo
Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House), 2025
This thoughtful book affirms that all bodies are beautiful no matter their size, shape, skin color, ability, gender, or any number of ways in which we are each unique. We see a child in a wheelchair, a nonbinary child, and a child in a hat who may have alopecia or have lost their hair due to chemotherapy. Children proclaim what their bodies can do – ride, climb, throw, spin, and so forth - in an inclusive way. The actions and the art move through the Jewish year and hence the seasons as well - for example "my body can spin" like a dreidel during the winter holiday of Hanukkah. What a joyful, multilayered experience! Laura Gehl’s rhyming text is energetic and fun. At the end, the author invites the reader to go back and identify each Jewish holiday depicted as well as other items, like a scavenger hunt.
The illustrations are bright and cheerful, immediately engaging even the youngest children. Alexandra Colombo uses detail amazingly well to draw differences, yet, overall, the characters are more similar than different: they are all children having a wonderful time.
The book is universal despite the particularity of the Jewish content.Young children will enjoy the playful actions. Jewish children will see a background of sights that accompany Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Hanukkah, Tu BiShevat, Purim, Passover, and Shavuot.
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