by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 22, 2010

Eve Bunting was 74 years old when she wrote the text for "One Candle." It opens with a Hanukkah celebration, but its a story about something much deeper.  The table buzzes with conversation, and the narrator remembers that "I love all our holidays when we're together like this." And then grandma tells the story of Buchenwald.

"We were separated from our familes and put into a camp..."

The history is conveyed simply but accurately. ("There was a war on at the time, and the Germans didn't like the Jews...") A little sister asks why, and the narrator remembers asking that herself. Grandpa shrugs, then says "The Germans didn't like a lot of people. It wasn't only the Jews." Then the illustrations turn to a faded red monochrome, as the narrative continues.

Always hungry, always cold, the great-aunt and the grandmother had lived in the baracks. The author hints at the horror they endued as they whisper the names of five women who'd shared the baracks.  "Rose was thirteen. I was twelve," grandma says. The children try to imagine what the experience must've been like...

Illustrator K. Wendy Popp used real faces for her pictures. (From the children and families in her community, along with the faces of her own children.) The book isn't just offering history, but a celebration of tradition. The inside jackets show a modern kitchen where Hanukkah foods are being prepared...

The story first opens with the narrator welcoming the arrival of her great-aunt for Hanukkah, along with an uncle and two grandparents. But when grandma arrived, she had put a brown potato in the middle of their table. This had made aunt Rose mist up, and the story is told to explain why. They'd smuggled a potato out of the kitchen on the evening of Hanukkah. (An illustration shows a Nazi guard with his back turned, standing by a German shepherd.) Aunt Rose had used the hollowed-out potato to make a Hanukkah candle.

And 60 years later, they still repeated this ritual. It's a way of remembering - many things, some of which are only hinted at in this story. But on the book's last page, the family says "L'chayim" as they drink a toast to the candle's flame. "To life..." The book's real message is delivered simply and subtly, in the details about the present as much as the past.  "This Hanukkah is like every other one..." the book begins.

"After sunset we light one candle in the menorah..."

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