Matilda Makes Matzah Balls

Bubbe has asked her granddaughter Matilda, both portrayed with light skin, to help make the prized “fluffy, floating, round-as-the-moon matzah balls” for the Passover seder—“the start of a new Passover family tradition,” Cohen writes. With buoyant cartoons by Galmozzi that alternate between scenes of the two cooking and close-up framings of their culinary handiwork, Matilda enthusiastically proffers her ideas for improving the recipe—making one giant matzo ball and lots of little ones in the shapes of stars, and creating pink soup by adding beet juice. To Bubbe’s great credit, she’s never doctrinaire or naysaying, though she occasionally looks bemused. “It’s all right, bubbalah,” she tells Matilda when the giant matzo ball sinks. “The nice thing about experimenting is you can always try again.” A slight, sweet tribute to the joys of intergenerational, open-minded home cooking. Ages 4–7. (Mar.)