Bring Back the Babka!
by Marilyn Wolpin; illus. by Madison Safer
Primary    Barefoot    32 pp.
10/23    9798888590089    $17.99
Paper ed.  9798888590096    $9.99

Rabbi Sally is coming for Shabbat dinner, and Mama’s freshly baked babka has disappeared. Young Sammy and Sol’s ensuing search around the neighborhood quickly establishes a pattern: their neighbors haven’t seen the babka, but each offers the brothers some of what they’ve been cooking, along with related advice—cholent, stuffed grape leaves, and gefilte fish are all “a lot like life,” it turns out. The “Stone Soup”–style Shabbat solution warmly celebrates food and community. (The cooks exhibit diversity in ethnicity, age, and dress, but all present as women; the author’s dedication pays homage to the women in her family.) Illustrations in water-based paints, gouache, and pencil show a cheery neighborhood, especially its kitchens. Information on the dishes in the book, from all over the Jewish diaspora, is appended, along with author and illustrator notes and, of course, a babka recipe.

From the November/December 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.