One Little Goat by Dara Horn with illustrations by Theo Ellsworth; New York: Norton Young Readers, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company; (c) 2025; ISBN 9781324-082132; 152 pages; $18.99; publication date: March 4, 2025.
SAN DIEGO — Dara Horn, whose adult books include the highly praised People Love Dead Jews, ventures into graphic literature for juveniles with One Little Goat, a story of a boy in search of the afikomen who passes through a time portal.
The boy’s guide is the “one little goat” which was purchased for two zuzim in the Chad Gadya recitation at the conclusion of the Passover seder. The goat, who talks, identifies himself as the “scapegoat” blamed by everyone for everything.
Given that tradition prohibits ending the seder before the afikomen is ransomed, the family in this fantasy has been sitting at the table for six months awaiting the recovery of the ceremonially broken matzo. To retrieve it, “the wise son” goes to seders past; his father’s in the Soviet Union when Jews practiced their religion in secret; to his great-grandmother’s surreptitious seder in the Nazi-controlled Warsaw Ghetto; through an unbroken chain of seders to those of the ancient rabbis whose discussions are alluded to in the Haggadah, and even earlier than that to the first Passover in Egypt at which lamb’s blood marked Jewish doorways so the angel of death would “pass over.”
The history lesson is tailored for children with the goat and the “wise child” wise-cracking; the great-grandmother kvetching that the seder is not being done correctly; and the siblings and cousins creating chaos at the dinner table. Even the invisible Elijah is present.
In all, it’s an imaginative way to explain that Passover seders have been conducted for centuries in many lands and that this shared heritage is an important component of the Jewish experience.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.