The Book of Life

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    BUY / BORROW THE BOOK     🕮     Night Owls is an paranormal YA romance adventure about Clara and Molly, two estries who run an art house cinema in the Village in New York City. In case you're wondering, estries are Jewish owl-shifting bread-eating female vampires! This book is my new favorite, and I'm not the only one. This debut novel won gold from the Sydney Taylor Book Award AND the National Jewish Book Award! The story is fun and fast paced, it's eery and emotional, and it's got characters I want to hang out with even if they would probably be dangerous to know.  LEARN MORE: A.R. Vishny's website Buy or borrow Night Owls Conversation about American Girl dolls: A.R. Vishny's Hey Alma article , Dolls of Our Lives podcast , and  The Book of Life's 2009 interview  More about the plays "Indecent" and "God of Vengeance" Fant...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    Finn & Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop by Joshua S. Levy is a 2025 Sydney Taylor Honor Book, and I'm thrilled to interview my friend Josh as part of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour. February 10-14, 2025, winning authors and illustrators will be interviewed on various blogs, podcasts, and Bookstagram accounts, and of course the interviews will remain available for you to enjoy at any time. Check BookOfLifePodcast.com for links. Be sure to listen past the credits to hear our extended conversation about Doctor Who! LEARN MORE: Buy / borrow Finn & Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop Joshua S. Levy's website Josh's 2023 appearance on the podcast to talk about The Jake Show My list of Jewish time travel books Buy / borrow Josh's favorite Jewish book: As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg Buy / borrow Heidi...

The Sydney Taylor Book Award will be showcasing its 2025 honorees with a Blog Tour, February 10-14, 2025! Interviews with winning authors and illustrators will appear on a variety of blogs, podcasts, and Bookstagram accounts. Interviews will appear on the dates listed, and will remain available to read at your own convenience. Below is the schedule for the 2025 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! Right now, the links below lead to the homepage of each blog. Note that after the blog tour is over, I'll update the links to go directly to the interview posts. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2025 Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky , and Stacey Dressen McQueen , authors and illustrator of An Etrog from Across the Sea Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Picture Book Category at Picture Books Help Kids Soar Sammy Savo s, author/illustrator of The Girl Who Sang: A Holocau...

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     🕮    The winners of the 2023 Sydney Taylor Book Awards, recognizing the best Jewish children's and young adult literature of the year, were announced on January 30, 2023 at the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards event. Martha Seif Simpson is the current chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee, and she joined us to discuss the 2023 winners of the award. In these troubled times, when book banners are attacking America's school and public libraries to try to preserve white, straight, Christian dominance by suppressing diverse books, it is all the more important that we celebrate Jewish literature. The Jewish children's and young adult titles recognized by the Sydney Taylor Book Awards celebrate the beautiful diversity of our community and offer a wonderful bridge building tool. Support Jewish books! Read them, request them from your library, buy them...

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     🕮    Martha Seif Simpson is the chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee of the Association of Jewish Libraries. She joined us to discuss the 2022 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 24, 2022. You can watch a recording of the announcement on ALA's YouTube channel . Here's my unofficial shortlist of deserving books, and here's the official 2022 Sydney Taylor Book Award press release and the printable list of winners, honors, and notable books. You can also scroll down to see all the winning titles listed, with links to any past podcast appearances by the authors on The Book of Life. A week after the officia...

Many years ago, I was on the Association of Jewish Libraries' Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, and I even chaired the committee for a few years. Those days are long gone, and I am no longer a part of those decisions. However, I still have strong opinions about each year's crop of Jewish kidlit. 2021 offered an inspiring array of Jewish books, with very diverse representation and an encouraging thread of activism, making me want to advocate for more titles than I have time to podcast about. Here then, is my completely unofficial shortlist of titles that I personally feel are deserving of Sydney Taylor Book Award recognition, or at least deserving of your attention. I'll also add the caveat that I did not read every single Jewish children's or YA book that came out this year, so there may be other titles that I would have added to this list if I'd gotten around to reading them. I'm not naming unofficial gold, silver, or notable books -- I'm just saying tha...

    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 B...

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 Cat...