The Book of Life

The Sydney Taylor Book Award will be celebrating and showcasing its 2012 gold and silver medalists and a few selected Notables with a Blog Tour, February 5-10, 2012! Interviews with winning authors and illustrators will appear on a wide variety of Jewish and kidlit blogs. For those of you who have not yet experienced a Blog Tour, it's basically a virtual book tour. Instead of going to a library or bookstore to see an author or illustrator speak, you go to a website on or after the advertised date to read an author’s or illustrator's interview. Later this spring, we'll follow up with an episode of Katie Davis's Brain Burps About Books devoted to the Sydney Taylor Book Award! Below is the schedule for the 2012 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour. Please follow the links to visit the hosting blogs on or after their tour dates, and be sure to leave them plenty of comments! THE 2012 SYDNEY TAYLOR BOOK AWARD BLOG TOUR SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2012 Susan Cam

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      🕮     As Vice-President/President-Elect of the Association of Jewish Libraries, I naturally attended the midwinter council meeting of AJL in January. One of the highlights of the meeting was the moment when Barbara Bietz, chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee, revealed the 2012 winners of the award! I snagged an interview with her after the meeting was over, and I hope you'll enjoy hearing about this year's selections "from the horse's mouth." Click here for the full list of 2012 Sydney Taylor Book Award winners . CREDITS: Produced by: Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel Supported in part by: Association of Jewish Libraries Theme music: The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band Facebook: facebook.com/bookoflifepodcast Twitter: @bookoflifepod   Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com or call our voicemail number at

Michael J. Rosen and Robert Sabuda , author and artist of Chanukah Lights , Susan Goldman Rubin , author of Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein , and Robert Sharenow , author of The Berlin Boxing Club , are the 2012 winners of the prestigious Sydney Taylor Book Award. The awards were announced at the mid-winter meeting of the School, Synagogue and Community Center Division of the Association of Jewish Libraries. The Sydney Taylor Book Award honors new books for children and teens that exemplify the highest literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience. The award memorializes Sydney Taylor, author of the classic All-of-a-Kind Family series. The winners will receive their awards at the Association of Jewish Libraries convention in Pasadena, California this June. Rosen and Sabuda will receive the 2012 gold medal in the Sydney Taylor Book Award’s Younger Readers Category for Chanukah Lights , published by Candlewick Press . This exquisite boo