September 25, 2006
While the family in I Have a Little Dreidel
is the very picture of heimish, the ties that bind in this rhyming story are more Seinfeldian in nature ("We await the arrival/ Of eight days of guests,/ Friends and family, and pests/ Who will threaten our very survival"). Of course, it's all in good fun—what kid wouldn't want to dine out on stories of relatives like Grandpa Dave, "a prank-loving joker," who's guaranteed to "hide the new dreidel/ 'neath the couch or the cradle." Udovic's understated domestic scenes do not fully convey the hubbub chronicled in Cleary's (the Words Are Categorical series) text, but what his pictures lack in exaggeration they make up for in affectionately observed details of domestic life. Ages 5-10.