Review: The Ninth Night of Hanukkah
The Ninth Night of Hanukkah by Erica S. Perl, illustrated by Shahar Kober Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org The Ninth Night of Hanukkah by Erica Perl celebrates not just Hanukkah, but neighborliness and the importance of traditions both old and new. A family has just moved into their new home and can’t find the box with their Judaica items. As the nights pass without the box turning up, siblings Max and Rachel ask an array of neighbors from different backgrounds for help, borrowing candles, eating French fries instead of latkes, making do with chocolate chips instead of chocolate gelt, and so on. Each night ends with the child-pleasing refrain, “It was nice… but it didn’t feel quite like Hanukkah.” The final night of Hanukkah passes without the box, but the children decide to invite the neighbors over for a ninth night of Hanukkah, representing the shamash, the helper candle. Perl explicitly makes the connection between the shamash helping the o