Three-time National Jewish Book Award-winning author Dara Horn (People Love Dead Jews)’s first book for young readers, One Little Goat is a quirky, dryly funny, Passover-themed graphic novel featuring a lost matzah, a never-ending seder and a time-traveling talking goat. A delightfully bizarre exploration of the meaning of Passover, One Little Goat is layered with joy, humor, and magic that flows from generation to generation.
At the Passover seder, an out-of-control family cannot find their afikoman — the hidden matzah required for the seder’s ending — and as a result, they are trapped at a seder that cannot end. Six months in, a wisecracking talking goat shows up at their door with bad news: Thousands of years of previous seders have accumulated underneath their seder, and their afikoman is stuck in one of them. Now the family’s “wise child” must travel down with the goat through centuries of previous Passovers to find it– and to discover the questions he needs to start asking.
“Irreverent and moving… Ellsworth[‘s] intricate lined textures and wide-eyed characters evoke Mark Alan Stamaty and Edvard Munch, conveying cosmic wonder and comedic anxiety. During his explorations, the narrator comes to see his family’s seder, however messy and querulous, as one link in an unbroken chain of survival, celebration and identity.”
“A trippy jaunt through time… This Passover story is told with nimble tongue-in-cheek humor. Readers won’t want it to end.”
“Ellsworth’s visual style elevates the book and makes it feel grungy and subversive… meant for kids to laugh with, rather than anything preachy or didactic. Yet like Horn’s non-fictionPeople Love Dead Jews, it’s also a deeply timely lesson about Jewish history and resilience, and about just how special and magical Jewish tradition can be.”
“The joyful embrace of life — in both the busy illustrations of expressive characters and the casual linking between Jewish history and the present — is clearly the point. This is a celebratory vibe more than it is a reference guide, and in that, it is an absolute success.”
“The holiday’s profound spiritual messages are movingly articulated by the comic book’s many characters in ways that will engage both those who have never before attended a seder and those of traditional observance. In the end, readers will be left searching not for a missing bit of matzah but with a hunger for further exploration of the miracle that is Jewish history as a whole.”
“One Little Goat is funny, chaotic and whimsical — an Alice in Wonderland-like tale in which a boy falls deeper and deeper into Jewish history, guided, and sometimes pushed, by the wisecracking goat…Perhaps it takes a graphic novel about a seder, and about the stories woven into every Passover, to fully appreciate that Jewish history in its tragedies and triumphs is not just backdrop but a source of pride and even joy.”
“While Horn calls this is a book for young readers, I (most decidedly not young anymore) was delighted from the very first page… A must-have for any Jewish family, as well as anyone who loves graphic novels or just loves stories that all full of humor and lots of fun. Just for middle graders? Absolutely not! Highly recommended for all ages!”
