100 Books Like Chik Chak Shabbat

This book has everything I love: An adorable kitten (named Ketzel, “cat” in Yiddish); a gentle, loving human, Moshe Cotel; and tender, pitch-perfect illustrations. And, it’s based on a true story. It will capture your heart as it did mine.

A young composer living in a noisy city hears a forlorn kitten on the busy street. He scoops her up and takes her home so they can “make beautiful music together.” When the composer labors over creating a one-minute composition for a prestigious contest, he finally gives up in despair until he hears little Ketzel strolling on the keyboard. He jots down the notes, enters it in the contest; Ketzel Cotel receives a certificate of special mention for “Piece for Piano: Four Paws”!

Ketzel, the Cat Who Composed is a sweet tale of friendship crafted to perfection.

I love stories peppered with Yiddish. Youngsters should know “schlep” and “chutzpah,” Right? And clever riffs on traditional tales are another favorite. Hence The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah immediately became my Passover must-read-to-the grandchild-choice. I also love to laugh and there are plenty of giggles in this book.

When Sheep, Horse, and Dog don’t help the Little Red Hen prepare for the holiday she finally gets upset but then, ever aware of the mitzvah of feeding the hungry, she gives in and invites all of them to her seder table. I must admit that after many years of preparing seders and also leading them, I’ve often felt like the Little Red Hen. “Hey, where are the helping hands here?” And, like her, I’m glad when everyone sits down to celebrate together.

A classic, The Carp in the Bath Tub, became one of my favorite books over fifty years ago. It speaks to me of the deep compassion children have for animals and how tradition/society is often in conflict with young sensibilities. I feel this book is not only good, but important, for it deals with big issues in a seemingly simple story.

Cohen writes the story as memoir, telling of her youth in New York in the 1930s and how she and her brother try to save the life of the carp that her mother buys a week before Passover, keeping it alive in the family bathtub, as was the tradition, in order to cook gefilte fish. She relates the realistic outcome without moralizing. That’s another reason I love this book. Today’s children and parents would have much to enjoy and much to discuss in reading “Carp”.

A big reason I love this book is that it’s so much fun to read over and over again—and then some more, finding joy in the cleverness of the text and more joy in the visual humor. (Taback won the Caldecott Medal for this book in 2000.) I also love stories with morals as long as they aren’t moralizing and this one, based on a Yiddish song, teaches “you can always make something of nothing” in the most delightful, warm-hearted manner.

Joseph has a striped overcoat and when it gets old he makes it into a jacket, and then a vest, and so on until it becomes a little button. Each page bursts with creativity. It is, quite simply, a perfect picture book!

I love how this sweet book shows neighbors coming together to help in even the most stressful of times.

Not only do the different neighbors—from trees to animals to people—help the house find a new “hat” (roof) during a storm, they all weather that storm together, and the house finds ways to help his neighbors too.

Kids learn that they can get through tough times with the help of friends. The warm illustrations also convey the range of emotions experienced in the book and show that it is OK to have all those feelings. I also love that the author’s motivation for writing this story was her experience of leaning on friends and family during her cancer treatment.

I love how this children’s book does not shy away from addressing acts of hate and bigotry, and how scary and sad that can be for kids.

The author writes in a sensitive and age-appropriate way, ultimately crafting a story of hope, resilience, and community coming together.

Beautiful collage illustrations from Selina Alko show a diverse group of neighbors from all backgrounds working to not only repair a vandalized synagogue, but make a young Jewish girl feel safe and proud of her heritage. I think this is a great introduction to the harm of antisemitism and the power everyone has to fight it.

I love that this book is based on the true story of the creation of the Urban Art Trail in San Diego, California.

Bright and beautiful illustrations by Theresa Howell show how young Mira inspires her neighbors to add color, hope, and joy to their gray neighborhood. Little artists will love seeing that they can make change and create something beautiful. 

I love that this book clearly communicates the message that each person is part of something bigger than themselves: a community.

But I also love that the author acknowledges that the feelings we have as individuals matter too. The better we feel inside, the better we are able to care for others, including friends, family, and our communities.

Kids will love the warm and friendly illustrations by Peter H. Reynolds, and adults will appreciate the important social-emotional learning this book fosters.

Everyone who knows me has at some point had to hear me recount at least one anecdote from this book! Dundes was a professor of folklore, and this book is about all the ways Orthodox Jews navigate the prohibitions of the Sabbath. It includes a lot of incredible history about how technology plays a role in helping people do what they need to do without technically breaking the rules—like the Shabbat elevator in the title, which stops automatically at every floor in a building so that observant Jews don’t have to press a button to operate the elevator (which is prohibited). This book changed how I think about automation, and it’s so richly and respectfully written. One of my all-time favorites.

This is a sweet book that focuses on the essential idea of Shabbat: rest and refraining from work.

It also teaches an idea that is part of the ancient lesson of the Sabbath—everyone rests on the Sabbath including work animals. I like this book—and its lovely illustrations—because it takes a difficult idea that is culled from rabbinic sources.