It’s also troubling. The legend of the Golem of Prague involves the 16th-century Maharal, also known as Judah Loew, a powerful rabbi who created a golem (the word derives from the Hebrew for unshaped form) to defend the ghetto from pogroms. In the tale’s many versions—a 19th-century German novel, short books by Elie Wiesel and Francine Prose, golem-themed episodes of The X-Files and The Simpsons—the golem often winds up attacking its maker, becoming more vicious than intended, or devastated by its own clay heart.

Given the folkloric, timeless nature of the tale, it’s no wonder it has inspired so many children’s books. This year’s entry, The Golem’s Latkes by Eric Kimmel, illustrated by Aaron Jasinski, is a cartoony, not-very-scary version of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in which a lazy maid delegates the potato-pancake-making to a golem, leading to a giant interfaith party to which the emperor brings applesauce. It’ll be out in a couple of months and would, of course, make a delightful holiday gift. However, I’m drawn to the darker versions of the tale. David Wisniewski’s Golem, which won the Caldecott Medal for the best illustrated children’s book of 1997, is really, really scary. (Any book that explains blood libel is not for the youngest kids.) The layered, paper-cut illustrations are amazing, and the story emphasizes the golem’s nascent humanity. The creature cannot control its anger, but also loves sunrises and flowers. After an explosion of rage, it begs the man it thinks of as its father: “Please! Please let me live! I did all that you asked of me! Life is so … precious … to me!” Rabbi Judah returns him to clay anyway, with the (comforting?) observation that the golem won’t remember anything about being alive.

For middle-grade readers, there is 2009’s Clay Man: The Golem of Prague by Irene N. Watts, illustrated by Kathryn E. Shoemaker. This one draws a pretty explicit Holocaust parallel (the Jews have to wear yellow circles on their clothing), and the soft pencil illustrations have a gentle, mournful quality. Other excellent middle-grade versions are Barbara Rogasky’s 1996 The Golem, with ominous, deep-toned illustrations by the late, great, four-time-Caldecott winner Trina Schart Hyman (it’s out of print but still readily available online), and I.B. Singer’s The Golem, in which the pathetic golem falls in love, featuring soft watercolors by another Caldecott rock star, the brilliant Uri Shulevitz.

But it’s in the young-adult category that I think the golem story achieves the most nuance. Teens love horror: Conventional wisdom has it that monsters represent the untamed id of adolescence, the inability to control one’s own urges. Vampires, a staple in young-adult lit, are all about longing and sometimes sublimated sexuality; werewolves are pure animalistic brutality; fallen angels reflect fears about the consequences of not being perfect; zombies represent brainless conformity.

The golem fits in perfectly. Clay, the 2007 novel by the acclaimed British writer David Almond, is perhaps the most literary of young-adult golem books. In it, an altar boy in a faded coal-mining town meets a mysterious newcomer who may have the power to create life from earth. Almond’s perspective is Catholic, but his biblical and moral themes are very familiar to Jews, and the book is clearly based on the golem story. Davie, the protagonist, wrestles with notions of good and evil, the desire to create and the power to destroy, and the way attraction and repulsion can be mixed. There are themes about the end of innocence, the expulsion from paradise, forgiveness and redemption, and the responsibilities of the artist. The Northern English dialect can be challenging, but this is a powerful, very creepy, and haunting book.

On the other end of the literary spectrum is Swoon, a 2010 novel by Nina Malkin. This is your classic girl-meets-boy-who-inhabits-a-golem-that-girl-has-created story. It is sexy, sexy cheese. The book’s heroine is Dice (short for Candice) and the hot, nasty golem is Sin (no, really–short for Sinclair). Do not confuse Dice or Sin with the other Gossip Girl-esque characters, Pen, Marsh, Gel, Crane, Doll, Con, Duck, and Boz, though everybody does tons of drugs and has tons of sex. Turns out, as things so often do, that Sin has been seeking a body to inhabit so he can return to the Connecticut town where he was murdered a couple hundred years earlier and take revenge on the descendants of his torturers. Sin is horrid to Dice, but she loves him anyway, because he’s a hot golem. Malkin keeps using the word “golem” (along with “dust-boy” and “dirt devil”), but Swoon differs from the classic golem tale in that Sin exists independently of a body; Dice has only provided a receptacle for his angry soul. In that way, it’s really more of a dybbuk story. A sexy, cheesy dybbuk story.

I loved the heartbreaking golem in Storm Thief by Chris Wooding (2006), and I think teenage fans of post-apocalyptic and dystopian fantasy will, too. After being caught in a “probability storm,” a kind of violent ripple of atmosphere that unpredictably changes things in its wake, the golem has been separated from his maker. He has only flashes of memory of being made, and he desperately wants to know who he is and what his purpose is. The golem is prone to flashes of rage, but he also wants to love and help. (He’s a cross between Frankenstein’s monster and Wolverine.) Unlike Swoon, which is a story of selfishness, this book is all about sacrifice. The golem is a secondary character, but he’s the one who stuck with me. Maybe because I’m a parent; we understand sacrifice.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (2011), by Catherynne M. Valente, is pretty florid; I wanted to yank out half the adjectives and stomp on them like ants. But among all the over-the-top fairies, marids, gnomes, changelings, witches, selkies, hippogriffs, and djinn, there’s a female golem made of soap. I loved her. “Her face was a deep olive-y green castile, her hair a rich and oily Marseille, streaked with lime peels. Her body was patchwork: here strawberry soap with bits of red fruit showing through, there saffron and sandalwood, orange and brown. … Her eyes were two piercing, faceted slivers of soapstone. On her brow someone had written TRUTH in the kind of handwriting teachers always have: clear and curling and lovely.”

This golem, too, longs for her absent maker. Despite her grief, she lives to serve. She cleanses the book’s heroine of the dust of her journey, breaking off her own fingers with a snap to throw into different baths—baths that give courage, renew wishes, foster luck. This rare female golem wants to nurture, not destroy. Unlike most golems, she can speak (when she does, soap bubbles escape her lips). She’s powerless, but not voiceless: Many young girls, pouring out their hearts in diaries and to friends, can understand that duality. She’s all yearning; again, girls can understand that feeling all too well. She’s also the only completely kind female figure in a fairyland full of men and boys and mean girls. And like the tree in The Giving Tree, she disappears as she helps and helps and helps.

A golem is a sturdy creature on which to hang a young-adult story. It works as a repository for every theme that speaks to teenagers: Who am I in the world? What powers do I have? Who can I trust? How do I create a separate existence from my parents’? How do I control my anger and manage my baser instincts? In many stories, the golem is an overgrown child, an identity teenagers fight against and relate to simultaneously. In When Toys Come Alive, Lois Rostow Kuznets, a professor emeritus of children’s literature at San Diego State, discusses how toys can represent our concerns about technology. Kids today have even more understanding of the dangers of technology than their predecessors—they grew up seeing the way gossip and bullying can spread through social media in the blink of a non-soapstone eye. Stuffed animals, unlike Facebook and Twitter, wait patiently for loving humans to come back. Perhaps the golem, made of earth and clay, represents a longing for a simpler, less networked, more easily turned-off past.

New Year at the Pier: A Rosh Hashanah Story by April Halprin Wayland, illustrated by Stéphane Jorich (Dial Books for Young Readers). This is my pick for the best Jewish picture book of the year. It’s about Tashlich. It’s funny; it’s moving; it’s lyrical; there’s good dialogue. Best of all, it shows how hard apologizing can be, and how cathartic. The protagonist, Izzy, is a credible little kid—he apologizes to his sister for drawing on her forehead while she’s asleep. I like the fun , vaguely French watercolor illustrations, with lots of yummy detail in the kids’ clothes—Stéphane Jorisch has a way, in particular, with shoes. (And I like that Cantor Livia and her guitar-playing accompanist, with their flowy Berkeley-vibed clothing, look like a specific and familiar breed of middle-aged bobo Jewess.) This book is superb. (Grades K-3)

When I First Held You: A Lullaby from Israel by Mirik Snir, illustrated by Eleyor Snir (Kar-Ben). “Rain tapped a song/ Rocks rolled along/ The sea waved with glee/ When I held you close to me.” The words are simple but sweet; for me, the folk art-y, naïve paintings are what really make the book. (Mirik Snir should be shepping serious nachas from her artist daughter.) Brightly colored, curvy images of lots of animal parents and babies cuddling make a soothing yet unboring (blessedly pastel-free) read for little ones. There’s a quote in Hebrew and English at the end, from Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: “The day you were born is the day God decided that the world could not exist without you.” And there’s a place at the back to place your child’s photo and birthdate. What kid wouldn’t feel safe and special when this book was read to him? (Infant to Grade 1)

The Yankee at the Seder by Elka Weber, illustrated by Adam Gustavson (Tricycle). This book is based on the true story of a Civil War-era Southern Jewish family that invited a passing Northern Jewish soldier to Passover dinner, only a day after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender. Uh-oh. The family’s 10-year-old son, Jacob, is horrified to have a “Yankee Jew” in attendance. He’s grieving the end of the war and the loss of his dreams: “I was never going to be a Rebel general. I’d never capture a whole unit of Yankees single-handed.” The tensions at the seder table are both uncomfortable and exciting. Jacob’s father pointedly tells the soldier that the message of the haggadah is that “no man needs to submit to the tyranny of an evil government;” the soldier, Myer Levy, says that the Passover story is about “how no man wants to be a slave and about how wonderful it is to be free.” Differences are put aside for the meal, but no one hugs it out at the end. “Well, that was something, wasn’t it?” is all the mom can come up with afterward. The book is illustrated with luscious, dark-toned oil paintings. There’s a historical note and photos at the end, but the book doesn’t feel at all like boring school stuff. (Grades 2-4)

The Champion of Children: The Story of Janusz Korczak by Tomek Bogacki (FSG/Foster). This is another book that sounds like a noble, virtuous, narcolepsy-inducing history lesson—the spinach of Jewish juvenilia. Yet of all the books on this list, this one is by far my daughter Josie’s favorite. (She’s eight.) Korczak grows up in Warsaw, encounters anti-Semitism, pledges to fight for children’s rights, goes to medical school, starts an orphanage for Jewish children in which the kids help govern themselves and create a just society. Josie loved that last part. The book is beautifully illustrated, with acrylic paintings that have a slightly skewed, just-barely-cartoonish perspective. Some paintings stand alone while others are tiny spot illustrations integrated into the text. There’s so much to look at. And at the end, when Korczak’s children are marched from the Warsaw ghetto to the train that will take them to their deaths in Treblinka, there’s so much to mourn. I still think Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars is a better introduction to the idea of the Holocaust, but this is a gorgeous, gently-told book that every Jewish kid should eventually read. (Grades 2-4, and for adults, too)

Faith by Maya Ajmera, Magda Nakasis, and Cynthia Pon (Charlesbridge). This photography book illustrates how different cultures around the world pray, read sacred books, eat, visit holy places, celebrate festivals, and mark lifecycle events. Some kids love to look at photos of other kids, and this book will hypnotize them. There’s very little text. The images celebrate diversity without bludgeoning anyone over the head with it. We see a Jewish girl making challah with her zayde, a young Buddhist novice meditating, Nigerian children praying together, a bar-mitzvah boy chanting the Torah, a Muslim family breaking the daily fast during Ramadan, a Guatemalan kid with missing front teeth grinning broadly in an Easter mask. Charming. (Pre-K to Grade 4)

You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! By Jonah Winter, illustrated by André Carrilho. (Schwartz & Wade, $17.99) Many years ago, as a tiny Jew, I got sick of hearing about Sandy Koufax. Whenever a kid would say there aren’t any great Jewish athletes, some grownup would trot out the story of a guy a million years ago who sat out a World Series game because it fell on Yom Kippur. To which we tiny Jews said (in our tiny heads): big whoop. Our unasked question: how much did that guy’s teammates and all the fans want to kill him? It sure didn’t sound Good for the Jews, refusing to play in the World Series. Will today’s tiny Jews also be resistant to hearing about how Sandy Koufax was awesomely Jewish and noble (there’s that word again)? Not if this book can help it. It’s enticing even without the nobility angle. There’s a crazy moving 3-D holographic cover image of Koufax mid-pitch. The illustrations are cool and distorted and freaky—and there’s a lot of brilliant gold leaf in them. Koufax is all arcing-curving-curve-ball-throwing giant arms, plus a set of bushy eyebrows. He’s pure power. He’s an enigma. The unnamed teammate who narrates this book (in a folksy voice that could possibly be deemed annoying) doesn’t really understand him, and we don’t either. But the fact that the main character feels elusive is OK. We respect his hard work, the way he faces anti-Semitism, the way no one can figure out what motivates him when he suddenly quits baseball at his peak. We end up just admiring the guy’s individuality; that’s better and truer than hagiography. Sometimes questions are richer than answers.(Grades 1-4)

When I Wore My Sailor Suit by Uri Shulevitz (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). This book, for very young kids, is a little snippet of one of Shulevitz’s childhood memories. Little Uri visits the Mintzes’ apartment and plays with a model ship on a dresser, imagining himself on a daring voyage where he meets a pirate and finds a treasure map. But he’s pulled out of his fantasy by a painting in the room: a portrait with creepy eyes that seem to follow him. At first Uri is too freaked out to continue his imaginary play, but eventually he finds a way to defeat the picture’s scariness and go back to his world-sailing fantasy. Shulevitz is a heavy hitter in children’s books—he won a Caldecott Medal in 1969, for The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, and has illustrated nearly 40 books (including Isaac Bashevis Singer’s astounding—and shockingly out of print—1982 retelling of The Golem). Last year’s How I Learned Geography is a more Serious, Important autobiographical book—that one, for slightly older children, addressed more directly Shulevitz’s childhood in World War II-era Warsaw (where his apartment was hit by a bomb in 1939, while he was home) and his family’s flight to Paris, Turkmenistan, and then Israel. Mid-journey, the father can’t afford food at a desert market, and instead comes home with a map, which turns out to offer its own kind of nourishment in terrible times. Both books are about the power of storytelling and imagination. The illustrations in When I Wore My Sailor Suit are warmer and more inviting than the ornate, sweeping vistas Shulevitz paints in How I Learned Geography. They’re cozy. And the story deals with addressing fear in an authentic, manageable way. Maxine, age five, adores it. (Pre-K to Grade 2)

Next week: the year’s best chapter books.