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, middle grade 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.”
“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.”
