In Children of the Book, American-born Israeli writer, editor, and translator Ilana Kurshan combines a charming memoir focused on the joys and challenges of parenthood with a thoughtful exploration of the power of books and reading to shape young lives. Kurshan's candid yet warmhearted story is enriched by her skill in relating her family's experiences to ancient sources of Jewish wisdom in which their lives are rooted.
Kurshan (If All the Seas Were Ink) is a voracious reader, revealing that she comforted herself between contractions as her eldest child was being born with Shirley Jackson's Life Among the Savages. In five sections corresponding to the books of the Torah--the Five Books of Moses, or Chumash in Hebrew--Kurshan gently recounts a journey of shared reading with her children. In doing so, Kurshan, a dedicated student of Hebrew texts, invokes the practice of midrash--rabbinic commentary on the Torah found in sources like the Talmud--to relate her family's experiences to Judaism's timeless wisdom.
Examples of Kurshan's skill at this task are an analogy she draws between the day-by-day structure of the biblical creation story and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and the marvelous way she connects the miraculous salvation of Wilbur the pig in Charlotte's Web to the tale of Moses and the Israelites' exodus from Egypt.
Children of the Book is filled with moments like these that make it a singularly wise and thought-provoking reading experience. Many parents will recall the closeness that shared reading with their children engendered. Kurshan's book is guaranteed to stir those happy memories and perhaps inspire anyone able to do so to create new ones. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer