July 29, 2024
A Hanukkah menorah wasn’t lit inside the U.S. White House until 2001, per this historical-leaning work’s back matter, during the first of ceremonies that employed borrowed menorahs until 2022. This picture book gives a backstory to the first Jewish artifact in the White House permanent collection, fashioned from a wooden beam stored during the residence’s Truman-era renovations. With earnest prose and reportorial, pencil- and watercolor-style images, Boxer and Moore cast that beam as this picture book’s narrating protagonist, imbuing it with a perspective that explicitly connects its own arc of resilience and renewal (“I was supposed to be destroyed,” it repeats) with the history of Jewish people during WWII. “I am the centerpiece of the story of the oil that lasted longer than anyone expected,” the beam-turned-menorah says, “a beam of light, a reminder of the miracle, a symbol of strength.” An author’s note and bibliography conclude. Ages 4–8.