cover image One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe

One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe

Dara Horn, illus. by Theo Ellsworth. Norton, $18.99 (152p) ISBN 978-1-3240-8213-2

A seder “is a holiday celebrating freedom, but you are stuck at that table for a very long time,” complains the unnamed child protagonist at the outset of this irreverent and moving graphic novel. His kvetching proves warranted when his younger sister tosses the afikomen—the piece of matzoh necessary to conclude the seder—into a time-traveling wormhole, and in its absence, the seder drags on for six months. Desperate, the narrator joins forces with the pesky goat from the Passover song “Chad Gadya” to retrieve the afikomen, visiting seders throughout the centuries; as Horn (People Love Dead Jews, for adults) explains, the seder night is like an archeological tell, and “all the seders that ever happened in the past before this one, they’re all here, underneath yours.” Revelations about Judaism and the youth’s own family history await at every stop, depicted in b&w drawings by Ellsworth (Secret Life), whose 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. Ages 8–12. (Mar.)