How I Saved Hanukkah

Dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of . . . what?

I looked at the hollow, green, plastic dreidel that Bubbi had sent to us. The gold foil candy coins that came inside it were long gone. We had gobbled them up the second the dreidel had come in the mail.

“
It doesn’t spin,” I said
.

“
Well, they are supposed to be made of clay,” my mom said, “or wood or something.”

When I asked her how to play, she said, “It’s gambling, for chocolate gelt. ‘Gelt’ is money. One of these Hebrew letters on it is a gimel, as in ‘gimme a gimel and some gelt.
’”

“
You don’t have a clue how to play, do you?” I asked her.

“
Not a clue,” she agreed. “But we can make up a game.”

I did not want to make up a game. Here we were not able to have Christmas lights because being Jewish was so very important and we didn’t do the hora and my mom didn’t even know which letter was the GIMEL!

OTHER PUFFIN BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

HOW I SAVED
HANUKKAH

Amy Goldman Koss

pictures by Diane deGroat

PUFFIN BOOKS

Thanks to Sandy Medof, Sue Horton,
Jim White, and Cindy Kane.

K
isses to: Momba, Poppa Bear, Emily, Bennett,
and my Freen. Happy Hanukkah!
A.G.K.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

About the Author

1

“W
e shouldn’t have to come to school when there’s a sub,” my best friend, Lucy, was saying. “When the teacher stays home, we should too.”

I nodded and said, “I was just thinking that the last few days of school before the holiday recess are such a waste, they should just cancel them. We’d start vacation the week before. But then
that
week would be the last week before vacation so
it
would be useless, and might as well be canceled.”

“We could cancel backward all the way to the first day of school,” Lucy said. “And since we know the first day is worthless, we might as well skip it too. Right?”

That’s why Lucy Doyle is my best friend. Not only does she understand me, she also agrees with me.

“By my calculations,” I said, “that comes out to no school ever. I like it.”

“Me too.”

The substitute teacher said, “Hush, girls. You two, in the back! I don’t want to have to speak to you again!”

It would have been entirely fine with me if she didn’t speak to us again, but next thing I knew, she was calling my name.

“Will Marla Feinstein please raise her hand?” she said. So I did.

“Oh, it’s you.” As she walked toward me, she told the class, “Mrs. Guyer thought you might like to make Christmas—I mean,
holiday
—decorations. Won’t that be fun?”

Teachers always give us dumb stuff to do before vacation and call it “fun.” It’s because they’re so, so sick of us, they start to get desperate. Our regular teacher, Mrs. Guyer, was the one who was having fun—she’d taken the day off.

“Someone should tell the sub we’re in fourth grade, not kindergarten,” Lucy whispered. Her breath tickled my ear, making me giggle. But when the sub put a piece of blue paper and a piece of white paper on my desk, my giggles quit. I glanced down at the Hanukkah colors and watched the sub hand out red and green paper to everyone else. My cheeks got hot.

Mrs. Guyer must have left a note for the sub saying there was one Jew in the class and I was it. A few days ago, before she abandoned us to this sub, Mrs. Guyer had me make a blue-and-white candle when the rest of the class made red-and-green ones. She talked about how everyone is different and that’s what makes the world interesting. But everyone isn’t different—just ME.

I wished myself out the window, on the playground, across the patchy lawn, on my Rollerblades, and zipping downhill, getting smaller in the distance—a tiny speck.

Then I heard Lucy’s voice, loud and clear. “No fair!” she said. “I want the colors Marla got!”

The substitute’s little lizard eyes flicked from side to side. “Oh!” she said. “Are you Jewish?”

“Totally,” lied Lucy.

The sub squinted at Lucy’s blond curls and turned-up Irish nose. Then she sighed and gave her blue and white paper too. Lucy made goofy faces behind the sub’s back until I smiled.

I decided to make a white sailboat on a wide blue sea. But that was too hard, so I rolled my blue and
white paper into a tube. I told Lucy that my brother could use it as a sword. Everything is a sword or a gun to him anyway.

Lucy, who is a great artist, cut her white paper into animal-shaped clouds and glued them to a blue sky. The whole blue-and-white business was way less icky since Lucy was working with Hanukkah colors too—but I was still glad to hear the bell ring.

*    *    *

My blue-and-white “decoration” was stuffed in my backpack. Lucy was waving hers around like a flag as we walked home from school. She sang, “Glory, glory hallelujah, teacher hit me with a ruler!” Then she poked me. “Hey, Marla, what’s wrong with you?”

I wanted to sing. It was Friday. A weekend! And then only two more days of school until vacation! But I still felt a little creepy.

I pulled a lemon off of a neighbor’s tree. “Catch!” I called—and Lucy did. We played catch while we walked, all the way to where I turn left and Lucy turns right.

*    *    *

My little brother, Ned, came charging out the front door, straight for me. He’s always deliriously happy to
see me after school. My mom says that’s why I don’t need a dog.