The Book of Life

    The Sydney Taylor Book Award will be showcasing its 2021 gold and silver medalists with a Blog Tour, February 8-12, 2021! Interviews with winning authors and illustrators will appear on a variety of Jewish and kidlit blogs. Interviews will appear on the dates below, and will remain available to read at your own convenience. Below is the schedule for the 2021 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! MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2021  Lesléa Newman and Susan Gal , author and illustrator of Welcoming Elijah Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Picture Book Category at A Fuse #8 Production at School Library Journal Sofiya Pasternack , author of Anya and the Nightingale Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Middle Grade Category at 100 Scope Notes at School Library Journal   TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2021 M. Evan Wolkenstein , author of Turtle Boy Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Mi

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT       🕮    Rebecca Levitan is the chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee of the Association of Jewish Libraries. She joined us to discuss the 2021 winners of the award, which annually recognizes the best Jewish literature for children and teens.  AJL is an affiliate of the American Library Association, so the Sydney Taylor Book Awards are announced at ALA's Youth Media Awards press conference, being held virtually this year on January 25, 2021. You can watch a recording of the announcement on ALA's YouTube channel . Here's the official 2021 Sydney Taylor Book Award press release and the printable list of winners, honors, and notable books . The Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour will take place February 8-12, 2021. Details will appear soon at JewishLibraries.org . We also spoke about AJL's Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award . The 2021 winner is Cats and Honey Cake by Sonja Spear. We mentioned AJL

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST    |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT    |    VOTE FOR MOCK AWARDS (goes live 1/4/21)     🕮    The Sydney Taylor Shmooze is a mock award blog created in Spring 2020 by Susan Kusel, Chava Pinchuck, and me, in order to encourage discussion of Jewish children's and teen literature eligible for the Sydney Taylor Book Award. In this podcast episode, Susan and Chava join me to talk about how it's going and about how YOU can vote for the mock awards. We also get some advice from other mock award bloggers from Calling Caldecott, Guessing Geisel, and Heavy Medal.   We've got a bonus episode for you too! Hear the full conversation with Julie Danielson from Calling Caldecott, Amy Seto Forrester from Guessing Geisel, and Steven Engelfried from Heavy Medal. Beyond the talk of "mocks," each of them shared favorite secular and Jewish books of the year! LISTEN TO THE PODCAST    |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT   LEARN MORE: The Sydney Taylor Shmooze Vote for the 2021 Moc