Golem

In Prague in 1580, the city's Jewish community faces a blood libel, the centuries old, false accusation that Jews use Christian blood in religious ritual, a lie repeatedly used to justify violence against Jewish communities across Europe. Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel shapes a giant protector out of river clay and, with his student Yakov Sassoon and his son in law Itzak Kohen, animates the creature and names him Joseph, sending him out to expose the people spreading the blood libel and stop the violence it threatens to unleash. Joseph succeeds at first, but as his power grows he becomes harder to control and increasingly violent, even toward people who mean no harm, until the Holy Roman Emperor agrees to guarantee the Jewish community's safety if Rabbi Loew deactivates the golem himself. The rabbi does so reluctantly, and the book ends without fully closing the story, noting only that some say Joseph could wake again if holy purpose and justice are ever needed together in the same measure.

David Wisniewski built every illustration entirely from cut paper, thousands of individually cut pieces layered to create dramatic shadow and real depth, a technique that lets him render Joseph as something between a human figure and a raw slab of earth, unfinished and unsettling by design.

This is a serious, at times frightening story about violence, prejudice, and power that outgrows its purpose, better suited to seven and up than to very young children; its ambiguous ending tends to prompt real conversation rather than a tidy goodnight.