Engineer Ari and the Sukkah Express

by Deborah Bodin Cohen, Shahar Kober (Illustrator)

Overview

As Engineer Ari drives his train to Jerusalem, he stops as friends along the way help him gather branches and fruit for his backyard Sukkah. When the Sukkot holiday begins, he is sad that those friends aren’t with him to join the celebration. But what surprise do his pals Jessie and Nathaniel have waiting for him at the train station? The sequel to Sydney Taylor Honor Award Winner Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride, this book celebrates a very special Sukkot with both new friends and old.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781512488715
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/01/2010
Series:	Sukkot & Simchat Torah
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	7 - 8 Years

About the Author

Rabbi Deborah Bodin Cohen is the author of many award-winning children's books including Papa Jethro and Nachshon Who Was Afraid to Swim. She lives in Maryland with her husband and three children.

Editorial Reviews

The team behind Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride (2008) has a new adventure in honor of Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival. The setting is still 1892 Israel, and it's Ari's turn to make the run along the new tracks connecting Jaffa to Jerusalem. Ari greets his friends along the route and collects items to decorate his family's sukkah (ceremonial booth), but back home Ari feels farklempt: "On Sukkot we welcome our friends to our sukkah," he says, "but our new friends up and down the tracks live too far away." Luckily, his co-engineers have an idea to take Sukkah on the road. Sukkot certainly deserves a bigger place on shelves dominated by picture books on Passover and Hanukkah, but this story's premise is far slighter than the previous book, making the bluntness of Cohen's writing more apparent. And while Kober's drawings have lost none of their geniality, they lack the sense of place and history that gave the first book its distinctive flavor. A brief afterword gives some history on the railway, but those looking for additional information on Sukkot will have to turn elsewhere. Ages 5-9. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"In this sequel to the Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride, Engineer Ari drives his train from Jerusalem to Jaffa, stopping along the way to collect fruit, branches, and a lulav and etrog from the friends he has made along his new route. After it is completed with the help of his engineer friends, Jessie (a woman engineer!) and Nathaniel, he feels sad that his new friends can’t celebrate Sukkot with him in his courtyard. But Jessie and Nathaniel surprise him by taking his sukkah apart, reassembling it, and fastening it to his train, so that he can share it at his stops along the way. Children learn much about the Sukkot holiday and the significance of what is used to construct a sukkah. There is an author’s historical note about the first train from Jerusalem to Jaffa in 1892. The reader learns that Ari’s three new friends are named in Hebrew for the three different parts of the lulva: myrtle, willow and palm, and that by counting the number of times the names appear in the story, the number of branches in the lulav will be revealed. The idea of the sukkah express, the appealing illustrations and the engaging characters will make this a hit with Jewish preschoolers." —Jewish Book World

From the Publisher

Engineer Ari, the first conductor of the new train from Jaffa to Jerusalem, builds a Sukkah with friends Nathaniel and Jesse using wood left over from laying the new tracks. With help from new friends Hadas, Aravah and Tamar, who live along the Jerusalem route, Ari completes the Sukkah by gathering branches and grapevines for decoration as well as the necessary lulav and etrog to symbolize God's presence. After a first Sukkot evening meal, Ari laments not sharing his Sukkah with all his new friends, and the next morning he is surprised by Nathaniel and Jesse's solution--to turn one of the train cars into the Sukkah Express. Simple, clean-lined art in gouache and marker establish a late-19th-century Israeli farming community, whose men sport mustached faces and fez-covered heads in the shadow of a bright, shiny-red locomotive. The easy, flowing text with patterned repetitive phrases--"chug-a-lugged" and "todah rabah" (thank you)--creates a smooth, predictable narrative for this Jewish autumn holiday story and its historical setting. An author's note provides background on the original Jerusalem-to-Jaffa line. (glossary) (Picture book/religion. 3-6)

Kirkus Reviews