How to Be a Mensch, by A. Monster

Leslie Kimmelman is the author of more than three dozen children's books, including Worse and Worse on Noah's Ark, Mr. Mintz’sBlintzes, and The Eight Knights ofHanukkah, a Sydney Taylor Notable book. She lives with her family just outside New York City  Sachiko Yoshikawa moved to the United States from Japan to study art and illustrates children’sbooks with whimsical and vibrant characters. Her art has appeared inaward-winning children's books such as Beach Is to Fun and What IsScience. She lives in California.

The friend­liest mon­sters you ever saw inhab­it the pagesof this live­ly pic­ture book, a sto­ry that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly teach­esyoung chil­dren how to be fine, upstand­ing peo­ple and offers numer­ous exam­plesof the Yid­dish word men­sch—in the lan­guage of the book, an ​"hon­or­able"and "kind" person.While each mon­ster por­trays a char­ac­ter­is­tic ofa men­sch, the author reminds chil­dren that being one isn’t always easy;it can be quite a chal­lenge on many occa­sions to do the right thing, butwhen you do it, you "feel ten feet tall." Chil­dren will iden­ti­fy withthese thought­ful, col­or­ful crea­tures who are each dif­fer­ent, some withbright col­ors, each with var­i­ous num­bers of eyes and heads, but all work­inghard at being good and help­ful. They share with oth­ers, respect their par­entsand teach­ers, sneeze into elbows or tis­sues, and help their fam­i­lies pre­parefor Shabbat.This cheery book fea­tures joy, cour­tesy, and care for oth­ersin a fun and light­heart­ed way. It can be used by par­ents and teach­ersto sup­port social skills with­out pre­sent­ing even a hint of didac­ticor heavy teaching. ---Michal Malen, THE JEWISH BOOK COUNCIL