The Book of Life

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     🕮    The winners of the 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Awards, recognizing the best Jewish children's and young adult literature of the year, were announced on January 27, 2025 at the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards event. Aviva Rosenberg is the current chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee, and she joined us to discuss the 2025 winners of the award. LEARN  MORE: Sydney Taylor Book Awards ALA's YouTube channel , where you can watch a recording of the announcement Heidi's unofficial 2025 Sydney Taylor shortlist Get more Jewish kidlit news & calls to action in The Book of Life Substack newsletter 2025 SYDNEY TAYLOR BOOK AWARDS Scroll down to see all the winning titles listed, with links to any past podcast appearances by the authors on The Book of Life. FYI, the Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour will take place in early Feb...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    BUY / BORROW THE BOOK     🕮    Sydney Taylor was the first author to write kids books that served as windows into Jewish life, not just mirrors. Her All-of-a-Kind Family series was game changing. These were the first books about Jewish characters to become popular with readers of all backgrounds, and they are still popular today. Jo Taylor Marshall, Sydney's daughter, sponsors the Sydney Taylor Book Awards that recognize the best Jewish kidlit each year. And now, Richard Michelson has written a picture book biography of Sydney Taylor. It's called One of a Kind . I spoke with both of them at the 2024 Association of Jewish Libraries conference in San Diego, where we were celebrating the 120th birthday of Sydney Taylor. If you'd like to hear more from Jo after listening to this podcast, you're in luck! I recorded an oral history with...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    VISIT KARBEN.COM     🕮    Appropriately, as we kick off this podcast's twentieth anniversary year, in this episode we are going to think about change and continuity. We say goodbye to an old friend, Joni Sussman, who is retiring after twenty years of leading the Jewish children's publishing company Kar-Ben. And we'll say hello to a new friend, Fran Greenman-Schmitz, who will be taking up the reins at Kar-Ben. I've been in this business a long time, so I remember when Joni started at Kar-Ben! This is her fourth live conference interview on the show, and of course it's Fran's first. Joni is the winner of the Sydney Taylor Body of Work Award , for her many contributions to the field of Jewish kidlit. To give you some context, the oldest publisher of Jewish books in English is the Jewish Publication Society , founded in 1888, but Kar-Ben is ...