Added: 05/15/2007 |
A How To About Handling The Story of HanukahThe writer of the following story has gone to several Hanukah parties. She had a neighbor who used to give a Hanuka party every December. There was an interesting decoration at those parties...a Christmas tree. Perhaps the author of the completed book discussed in the following article once attended a similar December event. Perhaps that's how she got the idea for the story in her book.
While visiting the various Festival booths, the writer came across a book about Hanukah. The author of that displayed book had wanted to help young children learn more about Hanukah. She had structured her book so as to deliver any information about Hanuka in the context of a funny story.
The book on display at the booth visited by the writer introduced children to a small Jewish community, one that had lost its Rabbi. The community members realized that Hanukah was approaching, and their Jewish community lacked a guiding hand for planning the specifics of the community’s celebration. Readers of that book then learned that the community had selected someone to search out information about Hanukah.
The writer then made use of the fact that Hanuka comes at almost the same time as Christmas. When the selected “researcher” sought to obtain information about the Jewish celebration, he addressed his inquiries to the wrong individual. He spoke with a man who assumed that the holiday of interest was Christmas.
The lovely illustrations in the book at the Festival showed how the Jewish community then tried to put together a Christmas tree. Of course, that was one of the stumbling blocks that always appear in a children’s story. Eventually, like in all children’s stories, everything somehow resolved itself. The community discovered how to celebrate Hanukah.
The writer appreciated the book’s clever use of humor. She tucked the observations she’d taken from that book into the back of her mind. The writer had long been toying with a way to write a children’s book about a different holiday. She aspired to create a children’s book about Norooz, the Persian New Year.
That writer is now on the lookout for some way to match the amount of humor in that book about Hanukah. Perhaps she will make use of the Persian candies that are made prior to each Norooz. The same writer has already put a passage about the making of Persian candies in an anthology. The writer’s story about a Persian visitor to New York City will appear in a book titled Through the Eyes of Love.
The writer is not unfamiliar with expressions of humor in the Persian community. The writer often sees skits performed on one or more of the Persian TV programs that air within Los Angeles County. The writer hopes that one such skit will provide her with the basis for a funny children’s story about the Persian New Year.
If the writer can stick with her intended approach, then perhaps one April many visitors to the Festival of Books will see on display a new children’s book—a book about the Persian Norooz. Maybe another aspiring writer will then set out to write a book about yet another holiday, one that has remained unfamiliar to most children.
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