Rosh Hashana · Kids' Books

The board book suits babies and toddlers who mostly want to turn pages. Sammy Spider and the picture books work from about three to seven. The Secret Shofar of Barcelona and Engineer Ari carry more story and history, and hold older children — roughly six and up — much better.

A board book, because it survives being chewed and can be read in ninety seconds. Sammy Spider's First Rosh Hashana is the traditional next step: it is built around a character children already meet at every other Yom Tov, which is most of why it works.

They give the ideas a shape a child can hold. Concepts like judgment and starting again are abstract, but a story about a converso family hiding a shofar, or a spider watching a family dip apples, gives a child something concrete to attach them to and to ask questions about.

Yes, and picture books are among the easier gifts to get right — they suit a range of ages, they do not need to match anything, and they get read aloud rather than shelved. For a class, the story-driven titles hold a group better than the board books.