Feast of Lights

by Ellen S. Jaffe

Feast of Lights illustrates the importance of love and family heritage. Twelve-year-old Sarah has a lot to contend with this holiday season. It is the first Hanukkah since the death of her little... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1894549600
• ISBN13: 9781894549608
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Sumach Press
• Length: 175 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 8 to 13 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 8

Customer Reviews

Reader, please venture in!

From an independent press, this dark-colored, soft-covered offering with the passive title "Feast of Lights: A Young Adult Novel", is certain to get overlooked on bookshelves. The browsing reader who takes a closer look at the cover photo sees a somber, sad-eyed adolescent girl staring more at herself within than into the lighted Hanukkah menorah. Reader, please venture in! Don't be put off by the `young adult' designation--it is for readers ages 10 and up. Modern-day Sarah, age 12, and her parents are mourning the death of her little brother. Sarah's father wants nothing to do with the holiday festivities this year. Sarah and her mother for the first time decide to polish and use Great-grandma's menorah (Great-grandma Ruth is in a nursing home in failing health, and will be unable to comment on family history that comes to light). Each night when Sarah lights the candles she falls into a reverie which introduces her to her own relatives in generations past during different Hanukkahs in their lives. In some of the eight episodes Sarah is fully a part of history, and in others she is simply an observer. Written in a thoughtful, poignant style with time-travel elements similar to Yolen's "The Devils Arithmetic" and Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," "Feast of Lights" will have the reader eagerly turning the pages forward (and sometimes backward)to a satisfying closure for this elegant story.