NOT SO FAST, MAX

Opening this picture book is like opening a photo album.

Every page of this story has the character of a snapshot. On one page, Savta is showing her grandchildren, Max and Emily, how to juggle apples. On another page, Emily is pretending to blow a ram’s horn as practice for the Jewish new year. In the pictures, Max doesn’t look like he’s having much fun. He’d rather be at home, making caramel apples for the holiday, but Emily and Savta want to spend the day picking apples in the orchard beforehand. Kirkham’s illustrations, however, look less like actual photographs than like children’s drawings. Fall leaves are zigzag lines on top of patches of red and orange. The two children have large, round heads that make them look a little like candied apples. (All the family members are White and Jewish.) Readers may understand why Max is so impatient. The scenes sometimes feel more like isolated snapshots than like parts of a larger story—the book is episodic enough to make some people fidgety. And readers without a Jewish background may be lost. They’ll have to read the glossary at the back to find out that Savta means grandma in Hebrew. And the word Tekiah!—the sound a ram’s horn makes—is never explained. But the apple recipes on the closing pages are worth waiting for.