Happy Passover Greetings!

The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Library recently acquired The Children's Haggadah, pictured here, as a gift from Roma and David Korris. This book, which includes a selection of Seder melodies, was edited by A.M. Silbermann and illustrated by Erwin Singer, with a translation in prose and verse by Isidore Wartski and Arthur Saul Super. This is the English and Hebrew edition, published in London in 1933 by Shapiro, Vallentine & Co. and printed in Germany. A German and Hebrew edition, Die Haggadah des Kindes, was also issued in 1933.

This colorful Haggadah uses lively illustrations to recount the history of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as described in the Torah, and explains the Jewish family ritual of the Passover feast, the Seder, from a child's point of view. How lively are these illustrations? --Very lively indeed! The book includes five interactive pictures with movable parts (turning wheels, flaps, and sliding panels), all in remarkably good condition, especially considering that this copy has seen over 75 years of loving use by generations of young readers.

Call number: qBM674.76 .S55 1933 CHMRB

Diane Shaw, Special Collections Cataloger, Smithsonian Institution Libraries