Shoham’s Bangle

Warmth and family values are the hallmarks of this stunning picture book. The most touching parts capture the intergenerational bond between Shoham and her loving grandmother

What a delight it is to be invited into Shoham’s warm, multigenerational home in Iraq via the pages of Sarah Sassoon’s Shoham’s Bangle. When the family departs for Israel, the reader, too, mourns for the home and fig tree by the Tigris River that they are leaving behind.

The story is told gently with its young audience in mind. The bangle jangles but does not jar. It is an ingenious metaphor for what the Jews left behind in Iraq. But it’s also a reminder that what is important are not the homes Jews leave behind but those that Jews rebuild.

Sarah Sassoon’s debut picture book draws from her Iraqi Jewish background to recount the story of young Shoham and her family in their native country, and what happens when, as Shoham’s mother says, “The time has come” for the family to leave Iraq for Israel.

Noa Kellner’s illustrations give us the warm colors of Iraq, the tilted perspective of a plane about to take off, and a family losing their (literal) footing. A grandparent-grandchild story, a diaspora story, a family heirloom story, and a food story, all in one.