even if all he has is some children's authors to look up that would be useful! Thank you.
That does sound like a very ad hoc hannukia you guys created! And it sounds like it might have been a blast to put together, too

How is it working?
(One year in college I just used 36 tealights, with a taper for shamash. Got a bag of 100 on sale, and the very entertained roommates helped to hide it since we technically weren't allowed candles).
We ironically have extra. Every time an Elder moves in with me, there's an accumulation of various Judaica (and I am discovering that we evidently don't follow the typical Jewish culture which seems primarily Ashkenazim around here, so some of ours is a little odd-looking. Apparently a bonfire at the end of Sukkhot is not the default tradition, lol, and it seems we've picked up some random local customs from every country we've lived in) and it takes a while to gradually disperse it back into the wider family, or find new homes for it since sadly we seem to have fewer children each generation.
And I'm still working on my "knights of hannuka" comedy hannukia idea; so that'll be more.
You might enjoy that one, actually, you've got a good sense of humor....
I'm ignoring all history and turning the Macabees and three random others into medieval-era Crusader-style full-plate knights, plus an even later era bedel/mubaashis (however you spell it) as the shamash.
I have two of the knights carved to where I'm happy. Still working on the others (they're sketched out but that's it; at one point I had more but decided they weren't good enough, so the project sometimes goes backwards as well as forwards). My brother says he'll help make the molds once this part is finished.
Undecided yet, is would it be fun to create a "round table" for them to stand around, where the table top comes off and you can keep matches inside...
They're turning out to be relatively large, though, so at this rate the table could turn into a whole candle-holder as well as matches.
If I like it enough, I'm hoping I can make extras and sell them for enough to cover the costs of making them, and then give them out one year as gifts. Since they're a set but they're all separate, they're kind of modular and can be placed around the house all year instead of just brought out once a year, so I'm hoping they'll go over well.... but it's taking forever. I'm not used to representational art!