The Book of Life

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     🕮    Regular listeners will remember my friend Susan Kusel, a librarian/bookseller/author who partners with me frequently to promote Jewish children's literature. In this episode, we discuss Holiday Highlights, a project we set up through the Association of Jewish Libraries. Our expert committee, Amy Lilien-Harper, Robbin Friedman, and Sylvie Shaffer, compile seasonal Holiday Highlights lists representing the best Jewish children's holiday books each Spring and Fall. We tell you all about the project, and about the amazing Passover picture books on the Spring 2022 Holiday Highlights list. Why were we both wearing tiaras during our Zoom call? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out. LEARN MORE: Holiday Highlights Susan Kusel's website Guest Post: How to Support Jewish Children's Literature  SPRING 2022 Holiday Highlights Shabbat Shalom & A New We...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST    |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     🕮    Welcome to this special edition of The Book of Life, recorded as a part of the 2022 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour! Visit https://jewishlibraries.org/2022-blog-tour/ to find the full schedule of interviews with the gold and silver medalists, published February 7th to 11th, 2022 and available thereafter to read at your convenience. I had the pleasure of speaking with the gold medalists: Susan Kusel and Sean Rubin, author and illustrator of the picture book The Passover Guest , Veera Hiranandani, author of the middle grade novel How to Find What You're Not Looking For , and Aden Polydoros, author of the young adult novel The City Beautiful . I hope you'll enjoy the conversation as much as we did.  LEARN MORE: Buy The Passover Guest Author Susan Kusel's website Susan's Tikkun Olam suggestion: read Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel Illustrator Sean Rubin's website Sean's Tikkun ...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST    |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT  PART 1   PART 2    |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    My good friend  Susan Kusel has been on the podcast before, to talk about The Sydney Taylor Shmooze ,  and to announce the Sydney Taylor Book Award winners in 2018 and 2019 . She also appeared in Beyond the Holocaust and Holidays , a 2019 episode about the Highlights Foundation's writing symposium, and in the 2020 episode The Mitzvah of Voting: Part 1 .  This time she's here along with illustrator Sean Rubin to talk about their debut picture book, The Passover Guest , an AJL Holiday Highlights book. See below for the list of fine Passover picture books recently recommended by the Association of Jewish Libraries. LEARN MORE:  Susan Kusel's website Sean Rubin's website Buy The Passover Guest at Bookshop.org Sean's work on Redwall AJL Holiday Highlights AJL's 2021 Passover Children's Book Recommendat...

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 T...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST   |  READ THE TRANSCRIPT     🕮    This episode is a call to action for U.S. citizens eligible to vote, and a reminder to listeners everywhere that voting is your superpower. If you are a U.S. citizen eligible to vote in the upcoming presidential election, please do so! For information about how to vote, visit VOTE.ORG . In this special 3-part series, some of your favorite Jewish kidlit authors will be sharing why they vote and they'll give some recommendations for ways to keep our democracy healthy. Listen to PART 2 | PART 3 In each episode of The Book of Life, I ask guests to suggest a tikkun olam action, a way to help repair the world. This special series is MY tikkun olam action. Please help me inspire more people to vote by sharing this podcast as widely as you can, today.   FYI, PART 2 explains how voting can be called a "mitzvah," and includes guests Elissa Brent Weissman, Lee Wind, Barbara Bietz, Jane ...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      |    READ THE PRESS RELEASE     🕮    Susan Kusel is the chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee of the Association of Jewish Libraries. She joined us by Skype from her home in Falls Church, VA. to talk about the 2019 winners of the award (and so did her dog Harry).  This year's Sydney Taylor Book Awards are being announced at the ALA Youth Media Awards press conference in Seattle, WA during the ALA Midwinter Meeting on January 28, 2019 at 8am PT. You can watch a live webcast here (and check back later for a recording). Here's the official Sydney Taylor Book Award announcement with the full list of winners, honors, and notable books: click here .  The Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour will take place February 10-14, 2019. For details, click here . The Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award was mentioned in the podcast: click here .   AJL's "Love Your Neighbo...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     🕮     Highlights Magazine was a staple of waiting rooms when I was a kid. I loved to read the stories and solve the puzzles, and I always looked for The Timbertoes comics. Today, Highlights is still going strong with magazines for children of all ages and a strong digital presence . There is also a Highlights Foundation , which sponsors workshops to help authors and illustrators hone their craft. "Beyond the Holocaust and Holidays: Who Are We and What Are We Writing?" is a symposium for Jewish children's literature, welcoming novelists and publishing professionals to Honesdale, PA, March 15-18, 2019. ( Click here for info on scholarships .) A stellar faculty will lead discussions on issues both practical and philosophical. For this episode of The Book of Life, we've gathered four of those faculty members for our own discussion: Adam Gidwitz , author of The Inquisitor's Tale , the Grimm series of books and podcasts, and The ...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     🕮    Susan Kusel is the chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee of the Association of Jewish Libraries. She joined us by Skype from her home in Falls Church, VA. to talk about the 2018 winners of the award.  Here's the official Sydney Taylor Book Award announcement: click here .  The Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour will take place February 4-8, 2018. For details, click here . The Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award was mentioned in the interview: click here .   The National Jewish Book Award winners from the Jewish Book Council have also been announced! To see their winners, click here . CREDITS: Theme music: The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band   Facebook: facebook.com/bookoflifepodcast    Twitter: @bookoflifepod   Patreon: patreon.com/bookoflife Photo: Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee Chair Susan Kusel with 2018 gold medalist titles Your feedback is ap...