Matilda Makes Matzah Balls

A Jewish child and her grandmother make chicken soup with matzah balls, a dish that’s essential to Jewish cuisine, especially for holiday meals. This Passover, Matilda will help Bubbe make the traditional soup for the first time. Bubbe supplies an apron, and they hum as they mix the ingredients. Matilda has lots of great ideas to jazz up the recipe, and Bubbe is agreeable and encouraging. Sure, Matilda can add lemon and extra dill to the matzah ball mix. Then they put the mixture in the refrigerator to chill. Matilda has another very big idea. What if they make one giant matzah ball instead of the normal small, round, moon-shaped balls? Bubbe is a bit skeptical, wondering if it will float, but as always, she’s ready to give Matilda free rein. Of course, the heavyweight matzah ball immediately sinks to the bottom of the pot. Bubbe soothes Matilda’s disappointment, reminding her that she can try again. The child’s enthusiasm and her grandmother’s unconditional love and acceptance shine through in this tale of culinary traditions. Gray-haired Bubbe and brown-haired, pigtailed Matilda (both are light-skinned) are wonderfully exuberant in Galmozzi’s bright, action-packed, detailed cartoons. Watch for the all-important box of matzah meal that appears prominently throughout the proceedings. Whether or not readers are familiar with matzah ball soup, they will connect with this family’s loving preparation of traditional foods. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Tender, warmhearted, and delightful. (recipe for matzah ball soup) (Picture book. 4-7) --Kirkus Reviews

Bubbe has asked her granddaughter Matilda, both portrayed with light skin, to help make the prized “fluffy, floating, round-as-the-moon matzah balls” for the Passover seder—“the start of a new Passover family tradition,” Cohen writes. With buoyant cartoons by Galmozzi that alternate between scenes of the two cooking and close-up framings of their culinary handiwork, Matilda enthusiastically proffers her ideas for improving the recipe—making one giant matzo ball and lots of little ones in the shapes of stars, and creating pink soup by adding beet juice. To Bubbe’s great credit, she’s never doctrinaire or naysaying, though she occasionally looks bemused. “It’s all right, bubbalah,” she tells Matilda when the giant matzo ball sinks. “The nice thing about experimenting is you can always try again.” A slight, sweet tribute to the joys of intergenerational, open-minded home cooking. Ages 4–7. (Mar.) --Publishers Weekly