Tikvah Means Hope

A sukkah is not a permanent structure but a temporary dwelling. A wind can easily blow a sukkah down, a rain can wash it away. Patricia Polacco tells an ironic tale in Tikvah Means Hope about how a natural disaster destroyed material possessions that people felt were permanent while a sukkah, something built only for a short time, persevered.It is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Roth of Oakland, who build a sukkah in the backyard... Read Full Review

I was very impressed that the author was able to take a subject that was terrifying to adults and retell it for children in a way that was gripping and real, but not sensationalistic or horrific.The illustrations and story moved me to tears.

The book is about a family who has a cat named Tikvah. Tikvah is very small so she could get lost very easily. Then Tikvah gets lost when something bad happens to the family. Read this book to find out if the family finds Tikvah. I recomend this book to kids who like cats.

As the review states, good stories for Succoth are rare. Patricia Polacco's story illustates how grateful the holiday of Sukkot reminds us to be for the shelter over our heads. Like Polacco in the Oakland firestorm, we were in our Sukkah when the SF Bay earthquake hit in 1989...another remindeer of how ephemeral our material world can be.