Children’s Literature review: ‘Gracie’s Night’

Gracie’s Night: A Hanukkah Story by Lynn Taylor Gordon, Illustrated by Laura Brown, © 2013 Cookie & Nudge Books, , ISBN 978-0-9857353-2-6, 30 pages, $8.95

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—In this beautifully illustrated story, Gracie lives in New York City with her father, who is  a hard-working bus driver, and their dog, cat and goldfish.  There is a mezuzah on their door, and an old photo on the wall of Gracie and her dad with the mother who apparently has died.  The ceiling leaks, the furniture is worn, and although Gracie’s father works so very hard, there is no money for luxuries.  However, there is plenty of love.

In couplets, the story is told of how Gracie gets a job at Macy’s so that she can have enough money to buy her father some presents.  Like her father, she works very hard.  In time for Chanukah, she is able to buy for him eight items of warm clothing.  Walking home, she sees a homeless man sleeping in a cardboard box.  He has holes in his shoes and his socks, and his coat clearly is too thin to protect him against the bitter cold night.  Gracie decides to leave all the presents she has purchased for her father alongside the man’s fragile shelter.  She walks away as the man still sleeps.

Afterwards, we see Gracie, her father and her pets celebrating Chanukah without the presents she had intended to give, and yet with wonderful gifts.  She had re-finished for her father a frame for one of his treasured family photos.  And he bestowed upon her wonderful validation for creating a miracle for the homeless man who never will know who she is.

The book urges children to set aside one Chanukah present (not all eight) for a child less fortunate then themselves, while also teaching what Maimonides has taught our people in the past, that charity given willingly, anonymously, and to someone we don’t even know, is a deed that occupies one of the highest rungs of the Tzedakah ladder.

This book is a PJ Library selection, so it may already have arrived in the mailboxes of the parents of many pre-school and elementary school children.  But if that special child in your life hasn’t received it, it may be well worth the price to provide that boy or girl with the story of Gracie’s good example.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com