The Book of Life

The Sydney Taylor Book Award will be showcasing its 2019 gold and silver medalists with a Blog Tour, February 10-14, 2019! Interviews with winning authors and illustrators and with the award committee leadership will appear on a variety of Jewish and literary blogs. Interviews will appear on the dates below, and will remain available to read at your own convenience. Below is the schedule for the 2019 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! 2019 SYDNEY TAYLOR BOOK AWARD BLOG TOUR SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2019 Emily Jenkins  and  Paul Zelinsky , author and illustrator of  All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Younger Readers Category At  Out of the Box at the Horn Book Barb Rosenstock  and  Mary GrandPré , author and illustrator of  Through the Window: Views of Marc Chagall's Life Sydney Taylor Honor ...

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     🕮    Hillary Saxton is a children's librarian at the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Public Library , and the creator of the event series "Stand Up! Storytime for Social Justice." She was originally scheduled to participate in the " Social Justice and Jewish Children's Books " panel at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference, featured on The Book of Life in August 2018. She was sick and couldn't make it, so I caught up with her later by Skype. Find the titles used in the 2017-18 Stand Up storytimes at the Cambridge Public Library's collection of booklists here . And please share your own favorite social justice titles in the comments here at The Book of Life . Speaking of social justice, check out the Association of Jewish Libraries' series of " Love Your Neighbor" booklists , created to provide all children and their families with a greater understanding of the Jewish religion and its people. ...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    Remember All-of-a-Kind Family ? It's the classic chapter book by Sydney Taylor, of five sisters living on the Lower East Side in the early 20th century. Now Emily Jenkins and Paul O. Zelinsky have created an original picture book based on those same characters, All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah . Illustrator Zelinsky attended the 2018 Association of Jewish Libraries conference where he gave us a sneak peek at his artistic process, as you can see in the photo below. I snagged his email address and arranged a conference call with him and author Emily Jenkins, and that's what you'll hear on this podcast. HANUKKAH TREATS FOR YOU: Buzzfeed Quiz : Which All-of-a-Kind Family Sibling Are You? Emily Jenkins' latke recipe Coloring pages based on Paul Zelinsky's art Teaching Guide for All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah   CREDITS: Produced by: Feldman Children's ...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    At the 2018 Association of Jewish Libraries conference, I bumped into author Jacqueline Jules . She's been on the podcast before in 2014 to talk about Never Say a Mean Word Again . Her new picture book is Light the Menorah: A Hanukkah Handbook , which offers meditations for candle lighting. We grabbed a quick interview after lunch in the busy dining hall, so you will have a "you are there" experience listening to our conversation about this wonderful new holiday book! Speaking of Jewish rituals like lighting the menorah, the Association of Jewish Libraries has published another list in the Love Your Neighbor series of book lists. List #2 is about Synagogues, Clergy, & Jewish Ritual . The picture books and chapter books on this list will help readers understand more about Jewish practices both in synagogue and in the home. Click here to see the list . CREDITS: Prod...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    Jane Breskin Zalben is an artist/illustrator and the author of over 50 books for children. Her recent picture book, A Moon for Moe and Mo , was featured in the Missing Voice picture book discussion group on Facebook in September 2018. The Missing Voice group was created by another author, Lisa Rose , to bring books about under-represented populations into the limelight. You may be familiar with Lisa's book, Shmulik Paints the Town . I spoke with Jane and Lisa by conference call, in the week following the anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, because I felt it was the right time to talk about stories that model friendships between Jews and non-Jews, and to encourage people to read more books that offer windows into different cultures.  During that same week, I worked with a bunch of my favorite women, my posse of snarky Jewish kidlit nerds f...

SEE LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR LISTS     🕮    In response to the anti-Semitic domestic terrorism that took place at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA last Saturday, my friends and I have done what librarians do: we've turned to literature, not for explanations, but for solutions. After 100+ email messages back and forth, we've hammered out a cream-of-the-crop list of "window" books for youth, that we hope will build empathy and understanding in the hearts of non-Jewish readers. There's no knowing whether books like these would have made a difference if read during the childhood of the Pittsburgh shooter, and we can't guarantee that reading them to today's kids will prevent future tragedy. But as the Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, tell us, we are not obligated to complete the work of combating anti-Semitism, but neither are we free to desist from it. We've got to do what we can. As librarians, we know that the right book can make a dif...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    The Girl with the Red Balloon is a magical time travel, historical fiction, kind-of-sort-of Holocaust book that won a Sydney Taylor Honor in the Teen Readers Category for 2018. I met the author, Katherine Locke , at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference in Boston, where we snuck into a side room to talk – please excuse the faint hubbub coming from outside. We discussed not only Katherine’s book, but also her article on Medium.com, “ Thinking about Jewish Children’s Literature in a Time of anti-Semitism .” 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   Patreon: patreon.com/bookoflife Your feedback is appreciated! Ple...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    Before I moved back to Florida from Massachusetts, my friend Barbara Bietz , author of The Sundown Kid: A Southwestern Shabbat , came to Amherst, MA for a workshop about Jewish kidlit. We got together while she was in town and recorded our conversation for you. 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   Patreon: patreon.com/bookoflife Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    American Golem: The New Adventures of an Old World Mud Monster by Marc Lumer is a new picture book from Apples & Honey Press. I ran into Vicki Weber of Behrman House (the parent company of Apples & Honey) at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference in Boston, MA this June, and grabbed a quick interview about American Golem . You'll notice the loud buzz of conference-goers in the background because we spoke in the dining room after lunch. Hopefully, that will give you a "you are there" feeling! 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 Support The Book of Life by becoming a patron at Patreon.com/bookoflife Your feedback is app...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     🕮    The podcast hiatus is over! I'm thrilled to return to my beloved Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel in Boca Raton, Florida, and to The Book of Life podcast! On Monday June 18, 2018 at the 53rd annual conference of the Association of Jewish Libraries in Boston, MA, I participated in a panel discussion of "Social Justice and Jewish Children's Books." Other panelists included author Lesléa Newman , and Horn Book editors Shoshana Flax and moderator Elissa Gershowitz .   As mentioned on the podcast, this post offers some titles in the various categories of books that I spoke about during the panel. These lists are by no means comprehensive. They mostly represent titles in the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel of Boca Raton, Florida, and the list was compiled by memory without actually visiting the library. My purpose is to offer a few suggestions to get you started on...