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Midwest Book Review Margie Blumberg has written a delightfully entertaining story about a family of bunny rabbits who spend a day at the beach.... The rhyming text is as clever as it is entertaining and children will thoroughly enjoy the surprise at the end! Charmingly illustrated throughout by June Goulding, Sunny Bunnies is a perfect pick for family, school, and community library picture book collections!
Children's Literature "Told in rhyming verse, the story is cute and clever. . . . [the] bright and cheerful illustrations are a delight and will appeal to the book's young audience. Goulding's ink-and-watercolor drawings are full of life and activity; she has created bunnies that are playful and endearing. Especially hilarious is the spread where the bunny children have snuck out of bed and are checking on their parents who have collapsed on top of their bed and are sound asleep, too exhausted to climb under the covers . . ."
Women Who Dream Big http://www.womenwhodreambig.com/fordreambigmoms.html In Sunny Bunnies, a whimsical new children's picture book, an adorable bunny family spends a delightful summer day at the beach. These charming bunnies enjoy special adventures—jumping in the waves, flying a kite, having a picnic, eating ice cream cones, and spending time together as a family.
EveryDayIWritetheBook.typepad.com Sunny Bunnies is a very sweet story about a family of bunnies who go to the beach for a day of sun, fun, picnics, and roasted marshmallows over a campfire. I got it right after my family had returned from the beach, and my four-year-old girls have really enjoyed reading (and re-reading) it. The book will be a nice year-round reminder of our vacation. I really recommend Sunny Bunnies—it's gentle and sweet and has great pictures that kept my girls very interested. The best part: at the end, the parents collapse horizontally on their bed while their kids stay up late downstairs prolonging the beach day.
The Reading Tub
There are lots of activities in each illustration that aren't captured in the text, giving you lots of opportunities to engage pre-readers and ask questions about what is happening. Type of Reading: bedtime story, anytime reading, family reading, playtime reading, learning to read, read aloud book, remedial reader. Educational Themes: This would make a great book for toddlers and preschoolers. You can practice object identification, play I Spy (colors, shapes), and introduce the beach all at the same time. There are lots of activities in each illustration that aren't captured in the text, giving you lots of opportunities to engage pre-readers and ask questions about what is happening. Recommended Age: read together: 2 to 6; read yourself: 6 to 9. Little Kid Reaction: We read this book just before vacation. Our daughter liked the book and focused on the things she wanted to do at the beach. We read this book as partners. There are plenty of basic sight words; there are no more than two sentences per page; and the rhyming scheme makes it easy to learn new words.
www.DCMom.com Local DC writer Margie Blumberg has brought us a winner . . . just in time for the many trips to the beach this summer. Attorney turned writer, she's showing us a great way to stop and check out the clovers (te he...get the bunny joke?). The bunnies will be taking even further seasonal trips in future installments so start your collection of family favorites. Sunny Bunnies is written by Margie Blumberg and lovely illustrations are done by June Goulding. The book is available through MB Publishing and is available in local Barnes and Noble stores, at Politics and Prose and at The Blue House which is located on Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda. You may also order it online at Amazon.com.
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Ottawa Jewish Bulletin By Deanna Silverman Written as a chapter picture storybook, Avram's Gift is essentially a fictionalized version of what sounds very much like vignettes of family history with overlays for relevance. As such, it is almost overloaded with stories within stories linking distant generations to its contemporary hero, Mark, called Markeleh by his grandparents. That Yiddish e-l-e-h addition to Mark's name is one clue to the love and sense of tradition that pervades this book. It reappears when Mark's dad's father, Grandpa Morris, talks about his life in the Russian shtetl, Aroshka. In Aroshka, his name had been Menashke, but Menashkeleh to his grandparents. The connection between the long ago past and present is represented in several other ways as well. Most obviously by a photograph of Mark's great-great-grandfather, Avram. Mark finds the picture scary and is disturbed that in their new home his parents want to hang it outside his bedroom door. Other connections include the fact that Mark's 'Yiddish" name is also Avram, the family's enjoyment of telling and listening to stories, and, above all, a love of shofar including great-great-grandfather Avram's method of teaching shofar blowing. It's the love of shofar and Mark's determination to not only learn how to blow shofar but to someday blow the longest tekiah gedolah ever at the end of Yom Kippur that tie this multi-generational family story to the High Holidays in general and to Yom Kippur in particular. Along the way, the story's complementary theme, new beginnings, surfaces again and again. A new home. A new best friend, Ari. Ari's first Rosh Hashanah in America. A new school year. A new grade. Rosh Hashanah. Stories about Grandpa Morris's new life in America. Stories about immigration. Stories about love and the pain of leaving/losing loved ones. So very many new begiinings—some casual, others poignant—all conveying the mesage that, by remembering, we learn from the past and that, on extremely rare occasions, the past and present can come together and be felt as one in special, tangible ways. Like a picture and a shofar. "Blowing the shofar with all his might, Mark . . . felt that everyone could hear it. No, not just the people in the sanctuary, but everyone . . . to the very spot where his shofar came from, where his great-great-grandpa Avram sat, with his eyes tightly shut, in the synagogue, listening to his favorite sound." Using real poeple as her models, Canadian illustrator Laurie McGaw's full colour, detailed pictures convey the gentle, sometimes wistful, tenderness of the text, its sense of connectedness, respect and inner joy. In sum, Avram's Gift is a delightful Yom Kippur family story.
Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter
"Avram's Gift is a Rosh Hashanah story, an immigrant story, and a story about contemporary Jewish life all in one beautifully illustrated chapter book bursting with Yiddishkeit." —Rachel Erlich Kamin, Temple Israel, West Bloomfield Michigan
The Canadian Jewish News A delightful, moving Rosh Hashanah story that teaches how each individual can deeply affect future generations. Exquisite watercolor illustrations by award-winning artist Laurie McGaw. Ages 8 and up.
Jewish Book World Mark is an eight-year-old whose affirmative attitude toward Judaism propels the plot of this well-illustrated chapter book. Just about the only thing that he doesn't like is a photo of an old, bearded, stern-looking man which his family reveres but that scares him. As the family prepares for and then observes Rosh Hashanah in the synagogue and at home, with food andfriends and services woven joyfully into the story, Mark learns more about the old man, his great-great-grandfather, Avram. The tales that Mark's Grandpa Morris tells at the holiday dinner table flow backwards to his childhood when he was a boy of about Mark's age, then called Menashkeleh. They are familiar ones of shtetl life and immigration, revealing the stern-looking old man in the photograph to be the soul of kindness, whose gifts of love and a shofar traveled across time and space with Menashkeleh/Morris, who settled with his parents and sister in Baltimore. The full-color illustrations, which occur every few pages, are photographic in their realism and they capture the personalities and surroundings of both the modern family and the shtetl-dwellers to perfection. There is more, however. Once introduced to Grandpa Morris's zeyde, Mark is inspired to learn how to blow the shofar, Avram's gift that now belongs to him. Details about synagogues, about blowing the shofar and about its centrality to High Holiday synagogue services introduce an instructive element into the story. Time moves fluidly once again, this time forward to when Mark has just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. He is asked to substitute for the shul's regular shofar blower on Yom Kippur and when he sounds the one great blast, "Te...ki...ah ge...dol...aaaa...ah" clear and strong, he imagines it sailing "to the very spot where his shofar came from, where his great-great-grandpa Avram sat..." An Afterword addresses readers directly, introducing them to Gary Stein, the real-life shofar-blower at B'nai Israel Congregation in Rockville, Maryland, encouraging them to learn to blow a shofar, and briefly suggesting ways for them to discover more about their own family histories. The story of Avram's Gift is imbued with a great deal of Yiddishkeit, told in a warm, earnest style that idealizes its subjects without distorting them. Mark is an unusually introspective eight-year-old but the illustrations allow readers of the same age to identify with him by showing him to be a typical American kid, with Senators, Orioles, and Colts pennants in his room, a contemporary looking house, family, and friends, and familiar toys. Librarians will do children, parents, teachers, and clergy a favor by connecting them with this affirmative book. For ages 8 10.
Children's Literature How many of us have seen a portrait or photograph of some historical figure or ancestor with a stern look and a long beard and taken an immediate dislike to the scowling face? Mark has had a similar feeling towards his great-great-grandfather Avram, for whom he is named, since his earliest childhood. And, worse luck, that scary picture is slated to hang in the hallway right outside his bedroom in the new home that’s almost built now. By contrast, Mark really loves his grandfather Morris, who will soon be coming for Rosh Hashanah. Mark learns about his grandfather’s love for his own grandfather, the Avram in the picture, and about the gift he received from him as a young man leaving Europe for the New World, in this touching and intriguing story. The holiday traditions are nicely woven into the story of two Avrams, and they tie together with Mark’s dream of becoming a really good shofar blower in the synagogue, like Aaron Stein, who can blow a tekiah gedolah for 46 seconds. Artist Laurie McGaw’s pictures are flawless—one could step right into them and feel at home. Set in the author’s hometown of Bethesda in suburban Washington, DC, with references to her original home in Baltimore, MD, the book is filled with details that keep the story authentic and nostalgic at the same time. A wonderful choice for those long holiday afternoons, it’s sure to spark questions about family history and legacies left to future generations.
Cleveland Jewish News "The shofar's blasts will be even more meaningful after reading Avram's Gift ... a handsomely illustrated storybook...."
Booklist Connections across generations . . . come clear in a story that's as sweet as honey used for dipping apples. Stephanie Zvirin
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