A beautiful, accessible Haggadah for modern Passover celebrants.
Leven offers an alternative, updated Passover Haggadah.
“I love the traditional Haggadah,” writes the author, but “I’ve actually never understood it.” Despite being known as the “Telling of the Passover Story,” he notes, “it doesn’t tell the Passover story very well.” Rather than centering the historical narrative from Exodus, the traditional Haggadah assumes that listeners already know the details of the story and instead focuses on ancient commentary. Moreover, per Leven, it leaves out important details: Miriam, the elder sister of Moses and Aaron, is identified in both the Torah and Talmud as a prophet and leader of the children of Israel, yet she is noticeably absent from traditional Haggadah texts. Seeking to fill these gaps in the traditional Haggadah, the author gives readers this “new narrative for a modern seder.” Written in a self-described “straightforward, easy to follow…chronological” style, the book eschews arcane, ancient commentary for a back-to-the-basics storyline that outlines the major narrative arcs of the Book of Exodus, from the Israelites’ arrival in Egypt and subsequent enslavement to Moses’ multiple and miraculous confrontations with Pharaoh. The text includes the traditional elements of the Haggadah (“what is to be done and said, and when”) along with useful guides that use pop-culture references for pronunciation (The “ah” sound represented by the Hebrew niqqud Kamatz, for instance, is pronounced like the letter A in Jabba the Hutt). At just over 100 pages, the book’s efficient prose and frequent use of tables and diagrams are ideal for lay readers who find themselves overwhelmed by traditional seder readings. However, the book does not sacrifice brevity for quality, featuring full-page Hebrew texts and beautiful visual images, from historic artifacts, seder plates, and other ephemera to reprinted pages from historic manuscripts and Haggadahs replete with classical Jewish art.
A beautiful, accessible Haggadah for modern Passover celebrants.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2022
ISBN: 9798986752402
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Leven's Finer Foods Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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