The Book of Life

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    " No Steps Behind [by Jeff Gottesfeld and illustrated by Shiella Witanto ] is the unlikely story of Beate Sirota Gordon, just a girl when her Russian-Austrian-Jewish family found refuge in 1930s Japan. Beate became fluent in Japanese, loved the nation’s culture and people, but hated its treatment of women and proverbs like “Women walk three steps behind.” After World War II, putting her language and cultural skills to use, she returned to Japan and fought for equal rights for women to be enshrined in the post-war Japanese post-war constitution. Though she won that battle, and remains a Japanese national hero, she is little known outside that country." -- Creston Books  I spoke with author Jeff Gottesfeld about Beate Sirota Gordon, and about the adventure of writing this picture book biography in order to...

[Edited, post Blog Tour, to include the links to the interviews.] I am very pleased that the Blog Tour tradition continues at the Association of Jewish Libraries! The 2020 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour includes interviews with the winning authors and illustrators, appearing on a variety of high profile kidlit blogs and podcasts. The benefit of a Blog Tour is that the various interviewers bring differing perspectives to their conversations, and different audiences of readers learn about the Sydney Taylor Book Awards. The Blog Tour adds spice and extends the reach of the awards beyond what AJL could do alone.   BLOG TOUR SCHEDULE   SUNDAY FEBRUARY 9, 2020 Sue Macy  and  Stacy Innerst , author and illustrator of  The Book Rescuer Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Picture Book Category at  100 Scope Notes at School Library Journal   R.J. Palacio , author of  White Bird Sydney Taylor Book Award in the Middle Grade Category at  The ...

Today I'm celebrating Multicultural Children's Book Day by reminding you that JEWISH BOOKS ARE DIVERSE BOOKS in more than one sense. On the one hand, the Jewish community must be fully welcomed under the Diversity umbrella within the kidlit world, and we've made strides towards that in recent days. On the other hand, diversity within the Jewish community needs to be celebrated in the literature, and progress is being achieved in this area also. While much Jewish children's literature is still "Ashkenormative," representing the white, European Jewish experience, publishing is beginning to recognize and represent other ways of being Jewish. The photo above represents Jews of color, differently abled Jews, adopted Jews, and Jewish-Gentile cooperation, and this is just the handful of books I was able to grab quickly from my shelf rather than a curated selection. Finding a variety of Jewish representation is getting easier all the time! Back in June 2017, ...

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 2020 winners of the award, which annually recognizes the best Jewish literature for children and teens. This is the second year that the Sydney Taylor Book Awards will be announced at the ALA Youth Media Awards press conference, being held this year in Philadelphia, PA during the ALA Midwinter Meeting on January 27, 2020 at 8am ET. For the first time, the Sydney Taylor Honor Books are also included in the announcement. The Association of Jewish Libraries is an ALA Affiliate. Watch a live webcast of the press conference. Here's the official 2020 Sydney Taylor Book Award press release and the full list of winners, honors, and notable books . The Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour will take place February 9-13, 2020. De...

In November 2018 I posted about the Love Your Neighbor series of book lists that I helped create for the Association of Jewish Libraries, in response to the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in October of that year. You can read about the project in Tablet Magazine, here . With the upsurge of antisemitic hate crimes that took place during Hanukkah 2019, we decided it was time to add to the Love Your Neighbor series. The series now includes five lists. The newest addition focuses on Orthodox Jews, because they were a target for so much of the recent hate. I am also very happy to share The Book of Life's new resource page, JUSTICE . This is a growing collection of suggestions for Jews and allies, for standing up to antisemitism. One of the suggestions is sharing the Love Your Neighbor series with readers of ALL backgrounds. The Love Your Neighbor series includes: Love Your Neighbor List #1: Standing Up for Each Other Love Your Neighbor List #2: Synagogues, Cl...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST    |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT      |    Buy the books by clicking the images     🕮    Yiddish is really popular right now. From the annual Yidstock festival each summer to the off-Broadway Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof, the mameloshn seems to be everywhere. That's even true in children's publishing. Today I have a joint interview with three authors who've created kidlit related to Yiddish language or culture. Sue Macy is the author of the picture book biography, The Book Rescuer: How a Mensch from Massachusetts Saved Yiddish Literature for Generations to Come , about Aaron Lansky who founded the Yiddish Book Center . Debby Levy , who appeared on The Book of Life in November 2016 to talk about her RBG biography I Dissent , is back with her picture book Yiddish Saves the Day . And Valerie Estelle Frankel has written a humorous chapter book called Ch...

A guest post by Sylvie Shaffer Breaking News: One of the world’s largest Persian Jewish congregations, Nessah synagogue in Beverly Hills, was attacked last night. Two sefer Torahs were damaged. We stand in solidarity with LA’s Jewish community. https://t.co/9wQipFzyLp pic.twitter.com/qA5AaYQ3ZT — American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) December 15, 2019 Just before Chanukah, I wrote this poem as response to the Nessah Synagogue desecration. At the time, I was finishing my second year of reading for the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, which I have been so incredibly honored to do. The award has been given annually since 1968 by the Association of Jewish Libraries to the best books featuring Jewish content published for children and young adults. While I have enjoyed reading and critically considering some wonderful books with joyful expressions of Jewish life, most of my committee reading has centered the Holocaust, and to be completely honest, it's been brutal...

I was on vacation as 2019 came to a close, so I'm a little late with this year-in-review post, but I hope you will still find it interesting. If you missed any of these posts, you might want to go back and check them out. Your fellow fans would recommend them! The most popular Book of Life posts of 2019 were (in increasing order of popularity): Sister Religion/Sister Kidlit , August  Blog Tour 10th Anniversary , February A Field Guide to Jewish Kidlit , December Diversity Needs Jewish Books , October Takeaways from "Beyond the Holocaust & Holidays," March The 2019 Sydney Taylor Book & Manuscript Award Winners , January Beyond the Holocaust & Holidays: A Writing Symposium , January The Book of Life has a huge back catalog - after all, I've been podcasting since 2005! Please enjoy these 2019 highlights (the other posts from 2019 were pretty good too!). Happy reading and happy listening!

The Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) is horrified by the recent spate of antisemitic attacks, especially those that took place during the holiday of Hanukkah. The shooting at a kosher market in New Jersey and the stabbing at a Hanukkah party in New York made national news; at the same time, there has been a tidal wave of verbal abuse, physical violence, and widespread vandalism of Jewish spaces. We mourn the tragic loss of life, offer prayers of recovery for victims, and urge all to stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in the face of intimidation. As an international organization of librarians, archivists, researchers, writers, teachers, and lovers of literature, AJL seeks to educate the public and provide resources to fight this scourge of ignorance and hate. After the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, AJL published the Love Your Neighbor series of youth booklists. These recommended titles demystify the Jewish experience for readers, with the a...

Shamash Night is the brainchild of author Erica Perl, whose book The Ninth Night of Hanukkah will be published in 2020. Her synagogue, Temple Micah in Washington DC, is holding the first ever Shamash Night celebration, and they explain it this way: " It is a community celebration of helpers and helping. It takes place on the “ninth night” of Hanukkah because the shamash candle spends the entire holiday helping its neighbors in the menorah. We’ll gather to give thanks to the shamash candle, and to all the helpers in our lives." What a beautiful idea this is! Personally, it's exactly what I needed to hear as we come to the close of the most violent Hanukkah of my lifetime, after multiple attacks on Jews in the New York and New Jersey area, and after a friend emailed me this morning with a photo of her children's elementary school outside Chicago with a swastika freshly spray painted on its bricks. Hanukkah commemorates the Rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerus...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    BUY THE PRINT BOOK      🕮    ANNOUNCING: The World Premiere of the audiobook version of Hanukkah with Noshy Boy & Friends by Anne-Marie Asner, voiced by Anne-Marie Asner and Ed Asner (yes, that Ed Asner!), on The Book of Life Podcast! Plus, we've got an interview with Anne-Marie about the story's creation! Noshy Boy, Schmutzy Girl, Kvetchy Boy, and their other friends are characters in a series from Matzah Ball Books , which shares Yiddish vocabulary and culture with young children through humor. For all you Yiddish-lovers out there, this is just the beginning of a mechaye for you: in January we will have an episode called A Bisl Yiddish , in which we'll hear from authors Sue Macy ( The Book Rescuer ), Debbie Levy ( Yiddish Saves the Day ) and Valerie Estelle Frankel ( Chelm for the Holidays ) about their Yiddis...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST     |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT       🕮    On The Book of Life, we talk a lot about Jewish kidlit. But where do you go to find Jewish children's books? In this episode, Marjorie Ingall joins me to talk about how to discover and how to access the best Jewish kidlit. Marjorie is a columnist at Tablet Magazine and is well-known for her year-end "best of Jewish kidlit" lists, and she's the author of Mamaleh Knows Best : What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children , which was featured on The Book of Life in April 2017 . Marjorie Ingall Resources mentioned in this episode, in order of appearance:  Podcast: Kidlit These Days, Diversity-Focused Publishing episode Blog: Jewish Books for Children (Barbara Bietz) Blog: The Whole Megillah (Barbara Krasner) Podcast: The Kiddush Book Club Website: Kveller Award: Sydney Taylor Book Award (Associa...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    BUY THE BOOK     🕮    The 100 Most Jewish Foods, a Highly Debatable List , started as a fun interactive feature on the website of Tablet Magazine, and then grew up to be a book. We've got an interview for you with the book's editor, Alana Newhouse, by The Book of Life's Canadian Correspondent, Anne Dublin . B'tay avon...good appetite! CREDITS: Produced by: Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel   Theme music: The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band     Facebook Discussion Group: Jewish Kidlit Mavens Facebook Page: facebook.com/bookoflifepodcast      Twitter: @bookoflifepod   Support the Podcast: Ways to Donate    Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473. 

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     🕮    Honeycake Magazine is a new Jewish magazine for kids ages 2 to 6. Creator Anna Caplan guest posted on The Book of Life about the magazine in May 2019. Now here's our podcast interview, in which I spoke to Anna about her inspiration for Honeycake and her plans for its future. Want your own copy of Honeycake? Go to HoneycakeMagazine.com and click on the Get the Magazine button . Order by November 17, 2019 to get your copy in time for Hanukkah. 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 Discussion Group: Jewish Kidlit Mavens Facebook Page: facebook.com/bookoflifepodcast      Twitter: @bookoflifepod   Support the Podcast: Ways to Donate  ...

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST      |    READ THE TRANSCRIPT     |    BUY IRVING / MARTIN     🕮    We are in a golden age of picture book biographies, and one prolific biographer is Nancy Churnin . She's got half a dozen bios out and more on the way, and each one is inspiring in its own way. Nancy attended the 2019 Association of Jewish Libraries conference to take part in the author luncheon, where she represented her Jewish interest books, Irving Berlin: The Immigrant Boy Who Made America Sing , and Martin & Anne: The Kindred Spirits of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Anne Frank . I was happy to snag this live interview with her during the conference. Be sure to explore Nancy's website for the teacher guides and projects she describes in our interview, as well as her blog The Kids Are All Write . When asked for Tikkun Olam recommendations, Nancy suggested supporting Room to Read , a ...