A guide to reading with your kids on the themes of Rosh HaShanah
Rosh HaShanah is a holiday built around some very big ideas. The birthday of the world. The passage of time. The possibility of change. The choices we make about who we want to become. Awe, gratitude, hope, joy, and the terrifying realization that another entire year has somehow passed.
These are beautiful ideas to explore as adults. They are slightly more complicated to explain when a small person looks up at you somewhere between apples and honey and the shofar and asks: “But what does New Year actually mean?” And suddenly you are trying to explain creation, human agency, the passage of time, spiritual awareness, and the possibility of becoming someone new… to someone who cannot find the shoes they were wearing eleven minutes ago.
Fortunately, children already know quite a lot about beginnings.
They know what it feels like to walk into a new classroom. To try something they have never done before. To plant a seed and wait. To discover a new friend. To notice a bug on the sidewalk that every adult somehow managed to walk past. Children live remarkably close to wonder. And perhaps that makes them particularly good teachers for Rosh HaShanah.
Because before Rosh HaShanah asks us to change, it asks us to notice.
Notice the world. Notice the people around us. Notice what has grown. Notice what needs tending. Notice what brings us joy. Notice what we might want to plant differently in the year ahead.
Reading together can become its own little Rosh HaShanah ritual: a pause between services and meals and apples and honey; a chance to cuddle up and practice seeing the world with fresh eyes. Below are some favorite children’s books that open conversations about wonder, gratitude, growth, courage, possibility, and the sacred art of beginning again.
A Rosh HaShanah Children’s Library
The Very Hungry Caterpillar — Eric Carle
Our caterpillar begins very small, spends quite a lot of time eating, makes some questionable nutritional choices, and eventually becomes something entirely new. Children understand instinctively what adults sometimes forget: growing means changing.
Rosh HaShanah connection: The new year does not require us to know exactly who we will become. It asks us to believe that becoming is possible. A wonderful conversation starter: What is something you learned to do this year that you couldn’t do before? What might you learn next?
The Dot — Peter H. Reynolds
Vashti is convinced she cannot draw. Her teacher offers a beautifully simple invitation: “Just make a mark and see where it takes you.” One tiny dot becomes the beginning of something much larger.
Rosh HaShanah connection: New beginnings rarely arrive fully formed. Sometimes a year begins with one small mark, one small choice, one small experiment. We don’t have to transform everything on Rosh HaShanah. We can simply ask: Where would I like to begin?
Last Stop on Market Street — Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson
CJ has questions. Why don’t they have a car? Why doesn’t he have the things other children have? His grandmother, Nana, never dismisses those questions. Instead, she gently teaches him to notice what else is there: music, people, beauty, community, and opportunities to help.
Rosh HaShanah connection: Rosh HaShanah is an exercise in sim lev—placing our hearts, paying attention. The world doesn’t necessarily change when we notice it differently. But we do. This is a beautiful book for asking: What beautiful thing did you notice today?
The Gardener — Sarah Stewart, illustrated by David Small
During the Great Depression, Lydia Grace is sent to live with her uncle in the city. She brings seeds with her and slowly transforms the gray spaces around her into places of color and life.
Rosh HaShanah connection: A new year is a garden we haven’t planted yet. We cannot control everything that will happen in it, but we can decide what we want to cultivate. Kindness? Courage? Friendship? Curiosity? Joy? Ask each family member: What is one thing you would like to grow this year?
What Do You Do With an Idea? — Kobi Yamada, illustrated by Mae Besom
A child encounters an idea and isn’t quite sure what to do with it. The idea seems strange. Other people don’t understand it. But when the child gives it attention, patience, and care, it grows.
Rosh HaShanah connection: Every new year contains possibilities that do not exist yet. Jewish tradition doesn’t ask us merely to predict the year ahead; it asks us to participate in creating it. What idea, hope, or possibility might we nurture this year?
The Rabbit Listened — Cori Doerrfeld
When Taylor’s carefully built creation comes crashing down, everyone has advice. The chicken wants to talk about it. The bear wants to get angry. The elephant wants to fix it. The rabbit simply sits nearby and listens until Taylor is ready.
Rosh HaShanah connection: Beginning again doesn’t mean pretending the previous year was perfect. We carry disappointment, grief, frustration, and unfinished things with us into the new year. Sometimes the first step toward something new is simply making enough quiet space to notice what we are carrying.
The Most Magnificent Thing — Ashley Spires
A girl has a magnificent idea. Unfortunately, actually making the magnificent thing turns out to be considerably harder. She tries. She fails. She gets frustrated. She walks away. And eventually she returns able to see the problem differently.
Rosh HaShanah connection: We often enter a new year with magnificent plans for the people we are going to become. Then we remember that becoming is messy. Rosh HaShanah doesn’t demand instant perfection. It invites intention, experimentation, patience, and another try.
The Book of Mistakes — Corinna Luyken
A stray mark becomes an eye. Another mistake becomes part of the picture. Page by page, what initially looks “wrong” becomes part of something unexpectedly beautiful.
Rosh HaShanah connection: This book sits beautifully on the bridge between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. As we look back at the year behind us, we don’t have to pretend every mark landed where we intended. Instead we can ask: What can we make from what has already happened? What might the next mark become?
Maybe — Kobi Yamada, illustrated by Gabriella Barouch
This book is essentially an extended meditation on possibility: the things a child might make, discover, offer, or become simply because nobody yet knows the full shape of their life.
Rosh HaShanah connection: There is something wonderfully Jewish about beginning a year with maybe. We don’t know what the coming year will contain. That uncertainty can be frightening—but it also means the story isn’t finished. There is still room for surprise. Still room for courage. Still room for joy.
All the World — Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee
A family moves through an ordinary day: rocks and sand, gardens and rain, food and music, quiet and community. Nothing spectacular happens—and somehow, everything is spectacular.
Rosh HaShanah connection: Rosh HaShanah celebrates the creation of the world not by asking us to escape from it, but by asking us to look at it again. The extraordinary is hiding inside the ordinary. Awe begins when we pay attention.
The Curious Garden — Peter Brown
Liam discovers a struggling little garden in a gray city and decides to tend it. Slowly—sometimes neatly, sometimes rather wildly—the garden spreads.
Rosh HaShanah connection: We rarely know how far one act of cultivation will travel. A little kindness, curiosity, generosity, or joy can take root somewhere we never expected. This is a lovely way to ask children: What would you like there to be more of in the world this year? And what tiny thing could we do to help it grow?
And Then, Listen
Of course, Rosh HaShanah eventually gives us a children’s book with no words at all.
The shofar.
Tekiah.
Shevarim.
Teruah.
Tekiah Gedolah.
Before we explain it, perhaps we can simply listen.
The shofar interrupts us. It breaks through the routines and noise that make one day blur into another and says: Notice this. You are here. A year has passed. A new one is beginning.
And perhaps that is enough of a Rosh HaShanah lesson for children—and for the rest of us.
Look closely.
Listen carefully.
Taste the honey.
Notice what has grown.
And then ask, together:
What shall we plant in the year ahead?
