In Our Teeny Tiny Matzah House

Told from the perspective of the house cat Kitzel, Bill and
Claire Wurtzel's In Our Teeny Tiny Matzah House is about a family who
lives in a crowded teeny tiny matzah house and needs to prepare for Passover
and the seder. The illustrations use photographs of ordinary foods (such as
oranges, cottage cheese, celery, peppers, cantaloupe, avocado, strawberries,
bananas, carrots and more) in extraordinary ways giving rise to expressions on
the characters' faces that are simply remarkable. Favorites of this reviewer
included the Statue of Liberty with broccoli torch, Souperman with a matzah
ball nose, Mat Zahbrei, Cantor Loupe and Flankenella. Back matter includes
step-by-step instructions to make Kitzel.

The story mentions many elements of Passover and the seder including ridding
the house of bread (watch that donut with wafer hair walk away!), asking the
Four Questions, listing the ten plagues, searching for the afikomen, singing
Dayeinu, and of course, having guests to celebrate it all with, whether in
person or remotely. But in addition to being a fun-to-read book, the magic of
the storyline is brought out through the uniqueness of the food art illustrations.
As such, readers may enjoy this book long after Passover has ended by trying to
replicate the many characters within and coming up with their own original
creations. Overall, an excellent addition to bookshelves for children of all
ages and faiths that stimulates imagination, creativity and viewing art through
an entirely different lens. --Freidele Galya Soban Binaishvili, Sydney Taylor Schmooze
Cre-ative-ly imag-ined and artis-ti-cal-ly ren-dered, this
pic-ture book tells the sim-ple sto-ry of a fam-i-ly of whole, sliced, and
seg-ment-ed fruits and veg-eta-bles who lives in a very small house con-struct-ed
of matzah.

Kitzel the cat, who nar-rates the sto-ry, is made entire-ly
out of an orange. His head and body are each half an orange, while his mouth
and feet are orange seg-ments. The moth-er is a ver-i-ta-ble sal-ad of
parts: her head is an onion with onion-skin hair; her mouth and body are vivid
red pep-pers; and her arms and legs are car-rots. Two pieces of pars-ley serve
as eye-lash-es and eye-brows. Oth-er fam-i-ly mem-bers are sim-i-lar-ly tasty
and amus-ing-ly named: Avo, the avo-ca-do broth-er; Cele-ria, the stalky sis-ter
who is flex-i-ble enough for gym-nas-tics; and a whole pantry full of inno-v-a-tive,
crunchy others.

It is almost Pesach. After dis-invit-ing some chametz
friends per-son-i-fied by a bagel, a piece of cake, a roll,
a donut, and a chal-lah, the fam-i-ly wor-ries whether they will have
enough space in their tee-ny tiny matzah house to con-duct a seder. Fam-i-ly
and friends arrive in a vari-ety of edi-ble con-veyances, includ-ing
a car-rot air-plane, a cheese heli-copter, and a float-ing
hot-air water-mel-on. Some friends join remote-ly via a com-put-er screen
framed in cel-ery. The seder pro-ceeds deli-cious-ly with tra-di-tion-al, joy-ful
retellings, songs, and, of course, afikomen-hunt-ing. As in the tra-di-tion-al
Jew-ish folk-tale, retold in many ver-sions, the pre-vi-ous-ly crowd-ed house
feels spa-cious when the guests have departed.

The sto-ry is sim-ple, but the art is inge-nious. Direc-tions
for mak-ing a cat out of an orange are includ-ed -- a fun, Passover-friend-ly
project sure to engage par-ents and chil-dren who are look-ing for an unusu-al
and inno-v-a-tive kitchen activ-i-ty to work on together.--Michal Malen, The Jewish Book Council
Told from the perspective of the house cat Kitzel, Bill and Claire Wurtzel's In Our Teeny Tiny Matzah House is about a family who lives in a crowded teeny tiny matzah house and needs to prepare for Passover and the seder. The illustrations use photographs of ordinary foods (such as oranges, cottage cheese, celery, peppers, cantaloupe, avocado, strawberries, bananas, carrots and more) in extraordinary ways giving rise to expressions on the characters' faces that are simply remarkable. Favorites of this reviewer included the Statue of Liberty with broccoli torch, Souperman with a matzah ball nose, Mat Zahbrei, Cantor Loupe and Flankenella. Back matter includes step-by-step instructions to make Kitzel.The story mentions many elements of Passover and the seder including ridding the house of bread (watch that donut with wafer hair walk away!), asking the Four Questions, listing the ten plagues, searching for the afikomen, singing Dayeinu, and of course, having guests to celebrate it all with, whether in person or remotely. But in addition to being a fun-to-read book, the magic of the storyline is brought out through the uniqueness of the food art illustrations. As such, readers may enjoy this book long after Passover has ended by trying to replicate the many characters within and coming up with their own original creations. Overall, an excellent addition to bookshelves for children of all ages and faiths that stimulates imagination, creativity and viewing art through an entirely different lens.--Freidele Galya Soban Binaishvili, Sydney Taylor Schmooze