HANNAH'S HANUKKAH HICCUPS

Is there any help for a bad case of Hanukkah hiccups?

Alas! Poor Hannah cannot stop hiccupping. Unfortunately, it is Hanukkah, and Hannah is busy practicing her solo performance for a recital at her Jewish school. Her family offers remedies, but none work. Her doctor gives her a brown paper bag to breathe into. Her neighbors, a diverse assembly, provide various folk cures. Mr. Taylor, who’s black, urges her to drink “pickle juice backward.” A Mexican-American neighbor tells Hannah to count to 10 in Spanish and place a “wet, red string on her forehead.” Other neighbors offer remedies, some obviously culturally specific and some less so. None of these rid her of the hiccups. In the meantime, she and her family light the candles each night and prepare and eat latkes. Still hiccupping, Hannah does manage to perform a tap-dance solo in front of a diverse audience, and her success will make readers wonder why she was so anxious. (Whether tap-dancing was a last-minute idea to conceal the hiccups or not is unclear.) Finally, on the eighth night of the holiday, as all the neighbors stop by for a feast of lox, latkes, and pickles: no more hiccups. Digitized illustrations are rendered primarily in red, gray, and black and resemble markers. Hannah, who has a huge mass of black curly hair, is paper-white, as is her family.

Hanukkah falls to the background in this slight story of a medical annoyance.