One Little Goat
A multigenerational, multidimensional, and multilevel graphic novel that endlessly explores the Passover seder
Editor’s Note:
Dara Horn’s graphic novel, ONE LITTLE GOAT, illustrated by Theo Ellsworth, is a delightful and wild ride through Passover past and present that begins when the baby loses the afikoman. More than that though, it’s a thoughtful look at the meaning behind the Passover story and the rituals connected with the seder and how they connect us through the generations. This book is for your wise sons and daughters, your wicked ones, your simple ones, and those who don’t know how to ask at all. Who better to guide readers through the seder than one goat that father bought for two zuzim?
And while this seder takes months, the read will be a quick one that readers will return to again and again.
As Lemony Snicket says, "At long last, here is the time-traveling goat-centric Passover adventure my people have been awaiting for thousands of years."
This excerpt from One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe, by Dara Horn, illustrated by Theo Ellsworth, Norton Young Readers, February 25, 2025, was reproduced with permission from the author.
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Dara Horn is the award-winning author of five novels and the nonfiction essay collection People Love Dead Jews. A scholar of Hebrew and Yiddish literature, she has taught these subjects at Sarah Lawrence College, Yeshiva University and Harvard University, and lectures frequently throughout North America. She is the founder and president of Mosaic Persuasion, a brand-new nonprofit dedicated to educating the broader American public about Jewish civilization. She lives with her husband and four children in New Jersey.
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5 Tiny Delights
1) Doing a “coffee shop write” with my 19-year-old daughter who also loves to write. When she’s home, we love to park ourselves with our laptops in our favorite coffee shop, indulge in our favorite foamy drinks, and write our stories together.
2) Re-reading old favorite books! There are so many new books I want to read, but recently I’ve taken comfort in returning to some of the books that became important to me as a writer. Right now I’m re-reading A.B. Yehoshua’s Mr. Mani, which actually influenced One Little Goat. It’s a novel about five generations of a Sephardi Jewish family in Israel and Greece, but it starts in the present day (which in this book is the 1980s) and subsequent chapters move backward in time. That idea of building a book like an archaeological tel, with the most recent parts of the story at the “top” and the oldest at the “bottom,” is something I borrowed for the structure of One Little Goat.
3) Watching really silly comedies with my three mostly-teenage boys. My writing, speaking, and organizational work these days focuses on fighting antisemitism, which is a heavy lift—so I appreciate living with people who share my love for TV shows about loser vampires.
4) Laughing at, and benefiting from, my husband’s many weird hobbies: remote-control aircraft, 3D printing (among other things, he created an electric menorah with candles formed from 3D scans of our family’s heads!), freeze-drying foods (so much space ice cream), elaborate cocktail mixology… Every day some new gadget or ingredient arrives in the mail, which I laugh at until he uses it to make something amazing. And then I still laugh at it.
5) My daughter is currently obsessed with baking cookies and cakes whenever she is home. I am a very fortunate beneficiary of this, and luckily her brothers eat most of it.
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5 Tiny Jewish Delights
1) My family knows this is far from “tiny,” but our seder is a Vegas-worthy production where we build a walk-through black-lit neon-painted Egyptian palace and fake-candle-lit stone-walled Israelite home in our basement, populated by my children playing the roles of Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s firstborn son, Moses, and the Angel of Death as guests travel through this underworld—and then pass through a blue laser-swamp “sea” in our garage. Everyone at our seder very much feels like they personally came out of Egypt.
2) Singing the Shehechiyanu with my extended family on the first nights of all the holidays together. My parents have 14 grandchildren, so we’re a large group all gathered and singing together, the same melody I sang with my parents and siblings when I was our kids’ ages. It is always such a blessing to reach that moment, whatever moment it is.
3) Watching my teenage sons go to volunteer in Israel last summer to help repair an abandoned school on the Gaza border before students returned to it—and watching their courage and confidence in fighting antisemitism here at home.
4) Teaching my 12-year-old son his Torah and haftarah cantillation for his bar mitzvah. (I’m a former “professional” Torah reader, so I’m his tutor.) He likes to deliberately derail his practice by asking me questions about the content of what we’re reading, because he knows I can’t resist talking about it. It’s a clever trick to get out of practicing—but it means a lot of great conversations.
5) Covering my eyes to bless the Shabbat candles and to privately thank G-d for creating the world and the people in my house—and then opening my eyes and seeing the people I am thankful for. I spend a lot of time in my own head, so I love opening my eyes into the warmth of that moment.
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