Latkes, Latkes, Good to Eat

Like most of this season's Hanukkah offerings, Howland's (ABCDrive!) uses the holiday as flavoring rather than the principal ingredient. Her agreeable outing combines a classic fairy tale plot with a shtetl setting and a touch of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. A girl does a kind deed for an old woman, who gives her a magic pan that will fry up latkes. Her brothers overhear the secret words that will start the pan cooking, but not those that will stop it (the words are ""A great miracle happened there,"" to which dreidels also refer). Howland serves up friendly, folk-ish art, containing the excesses of the plot with down-to-earth depictions of people and village. Ages 5-8. (Aug.)