Book Nook: The Amazing Adventures of Super Dreidel (Write Your Own Ending)

Author Howard Eisenberg has just released "The Amazing Adventures of Super Dreidel," the first in a new and unique series of Write Your Own Ending books from Mascot Books. Within the pages, Howard Eisenberg invites young readers to become writers and his co-authors, releasing a burst of creativity and imagination within each child.

"The Amazing Adventures of Super Dreidel" involves two protagonists, Rachel and her brother Randy, who to their surprise, built a Super Dreidel for Hanukkah that on its test flight would spin them thousands of years back in time. The Super Dreidel helps them fight along with the Maccabees to win a war against the Greeks. When Super Dreidel crashes, the siblings need to figure out how to get home to Mom, Dad, and their dog, Spot.

The book's charming light verse may be read by the impatient reader in one evening or, like Hanukkah candles, be enjoyed slowly, read each night in eight individually glowing portions -- by young readers themselves or to younger children by parents and teachers. Published just in time for Hanukkah, the books have two blank pages bound into them near the end. A Greek fighting elephant is about to flatten them like potato pancakes after Super Dreidel, powered by their mother's blender, crashes. That's where kids (if necessary with help from parents or teachers) can write their own endings.

After they've successfully pushed their Imagination Buttons, the author invites readers to send their original endings to sirhowardeisenberg@gmail.com. The three best will win copies of his next Write Your Own Ending book -- The Dinosaur in the Elevator -- due out in March, 2020. His introduction to this first book ends with, "Hmm, you might want to write an ending for that book, too."

Howard Eisenberg has been a writer for 75 years (since WWII) and has written the Guess Who Zoo series and several other children's books, a half-dozen books for adults, more than 100 magazine articles, and a musical, much of it with his late wife, Arlene, who co-wrote the original What to Expect books with their daughter, Heidi Murkoff. Asked why he switched to writing children's books, the 93-year-old author replies, "It keeps me young."

Eisenberg began writing at the end of WWII as an 18-year-old with his infantry company in a former SS barracks in Germany. Because he had had two years of college and was presumed to be literate, Captain Ingraham pointed to a mimeo machine the Germans had left behind and ordered him to write a newspaper "for morale." Howard completed his first interviews and "The Co. K Rifleman" was born. His first published magazine article: "I Fell 2,000 Feet and Lived" for Flying Magazine when a stunt parachutist's chute failed to open in upstate New York. Fifty years later, Flying reprinted it in a series of "The Best of Flying." Eisenberg has written hundreds of magazine articles since, jointly bylined after marriage as "By Arlene and Howard Eisenberg" in Saturday Evening Post, Parade, Reader's Digest, Cosmopolitan, McCall's, Sports Illustrated and many other magazines, including book excerpts in the New York Times Magazine and elsewhere. The pair wrote five books together (including a college health textbook (until their daughter, Heidi Murkoff, kidnapped her to co-author the original "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and other remarkably successful books that followed in the series.) Howard started solo writing with "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cooperstown" and "It's Never Too Late to Date" and has since written lyrics for a "Guess Who Zoo" CD and a "Fun that Educates" children's book series (Mascot) that includes Guess Who Zoo, Guess Who Farm, and Guess Who Neighborhood. Howard has also written "Adorable Scoundrels" and a musical titled “Million Dollar Bet.”