Happy (Jewish) Father's Day!

BUY or BORROW these books

Two Sydney Taylor Book Award winners, Veera Hiranandani and Vesper Stamper, have joined forces to create the perfect book for fathers and grandfathers: The Greatest (Random House Studio, 2024), a picture book about how "the power of love makes us all the greatest to somebody." 

An old man reflects that although he feels perfectly ordinary, his grandchildren act like he's the greatest grandfather in the world. We see their loving interactions as they play and eat and and build together, against an understated but fully present backdrop of Jewish home life and holidays. We see growth, as the teenage grandson puts aside his phone and starts to participate in the fun along with his younger sisters. In the end, the grandfather realizes that "Maybe love is like a mirror and it's reflected back and forth until it glows so bright, everything is surrounded by that light." A quiet, lovely ode to l'dor vador, the continuity of generations.

I asked my friends in the Jewish Kidlit Mavens group on Facebook for their favorite Jewish dads and grandfathers in children's literature, and got some fun responses:

• Papa from All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor, who never runs out of patience for his five daughters and baby boy Charlie.
  
  
• Myron Krupnik from the classic Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry.
  
  
• Ellie's Dad in Starfish by Lisa Fipps, whose kindness is in strong contrast to her unloving mother.
  
  
• The Grandpa in The House on the Roof: A Sukkot Story by David Adler, who throws an amazing Sukkot party for his grandkids and also takes the antisemitic landlady to court and wins.
  
  
• The kind and understanding stepfather in The Jake Show by Joshua S. Levy.
  
  
• Ellen's Abba, who chaperones her class's field trip to Barcelona, in Ellen Outside the Lines by A.J. Sass.
  
  
• The Dad in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume - not canonically Jewish, but the family certainly can be read that way.
  
  
• The Baba in Two New Years by Richard Ho, especially because when I interviewed the author he told me the father in the story looks like him!
  
  
• Daddy and Abba, Nate's two dads in The Purim Superhero by Elisabeth Kushner, who encourage him to choose the costume that brings him joy rather than go along with the crowd. 
  
  
• And real-life father of Anne Frank, Otto Frank, from The Diary of a Young Girl.
  

 

Happy Father's Day, everyone!