The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit (Mostly)

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/12/world-premiere-hanukkah-with-noshy-boy.html   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, Schmutz...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-field-guide-to-jewish-kidlit.html   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...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-100-most-jewish-foods.html   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!...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/11/honeycake-magazine.html   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. Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to...

SHOW NOTES:  https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/10/nancy-churnin-biography-queen.html   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 r...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/09/bonus-episode-superfight.html   In May 2019 I posted an interview with Jonathan Auxier , the author of Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster . In our interview we talked about the book, of course, but we also talked about our favorite board games. I met Jonathan at the 2019 Association of Jewish Libraries conference where he'd come to accep...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-book-of-life-live-show.html   At the 2019 Association of Jewish Libraries conference in Los Angeles, California, we recorded a Book of Life live show. My guests were Joni Sussman of KarBen Publishing , and author/illustrator/musician Barney Saltzberg . We discussed picture book illustration while recording our conversation in front of a live...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/08/sister-religionsister-kidlit.html   Sadaf Siddique and Gauri Manglick are the co-creators of Kitaab World , a website that promotes South Asian children's books. Within their website, they created a campaign called Counter Islamophobia Through Stories , (similar to the Love Your Neighbor campaign that I worked on to help bring Jewish books to AL...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/08/notes-from-young-reader.html   Young Aria is a voracious reader. In this interview, she shares a few of her favorite titles: All Kinds of Strong by Sharon Reiss Baker Zishe the Strongman by Robert Rubinstein Brave Girl : Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers' Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel Gittel's Journey : An Ellis Island Story by Lesléa Newman T...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-cage-without-bars.html   Anne Dublin is a Toronto-based author and retired synagogue librarian. She is the Canadian Correspondent for The Book of Life Podcast, performing many of our interviews with Canadian creatives. She's also the author of A Cage Without Bars , a historical middle grade novel that tells the little-known tale of Jewish chil...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/06/simple-acts-busy-familys-guide-to.html   Natalie Silverstein is the New York volunteer coordinator of Doing Good Together , an organization that empowers families to raise caring, engaged children. She wrote Simple Acts: The Busy Family's Guide to Giving Back to give parents practical ideas for incorporating service and the spirit of giving into...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/05/craig-taubman-mostly-kosher.html   Craig Taubman is a long-time star in the world of American Jewish rock and roll, and the founder of the Pico Union Project .  Mostly Kosher is an up and coming Gypsy Rock Klezmer band whose tagline is "word to your bubbe."  In spring 2019, Craig Taubman brought along Mostly Kosher and together they put on a foo...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/05/sweep-story-of-girl-and-her-monster.html   May 1 is May Day , the chimney sweeps' holiday. It's the perfect day to bring you a podcast about Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier . The book introduces us to Nan, a chimney climber, and her golem friend Charlie, a creature made of soot. This middle grade novel won the 2019...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-length-of-string.html   The Length of a String won a 2019 Sydney Taylor Honor Award in the Older Readers Category. It's a middle grade novel about Imani, an adopted black Jewish girl who wants to learn about her birth parents. When she inherits a Holocaust-era diary from her Jewish great-grandmother, she begins to see family in a whole new w...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-kosher-baker.html   Paula Shoyer is known as The Kosher Baker . I met her at Limmud , a one day conference of Jewish learning on a wide variety of topics, held in December 2018 in Boca Raton, Florida. Paula was there to present two sessions: " Are Your Jewish Holiday Meals Dangerous? " and " Jewish Cookbooks Tell Our Stories ." We sat down b...

Craig Taubman is coming to Congregation B'nai Israel in Boca Raton! If you will be in South Florida, don't miss this show! Call 561-241-8118 for tickets or BUY TICKETS HERE . Listen to a special message from Craig now, and keep an eye on The Book of Life for an upcoming full-length interview! bookoflifepodcast.com

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/03/fanias-heart-birthday-card-in-auschwitz.html   The Book of Life's Canadian Correspondent Anne Dublin spoke to author Anne Renaud after she won the 2018 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fania's Heart , a Holocaust picture book for older readers. It's the true story of a heart-shaped birthday card created in Auschwitz at great personal risk by w...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/02/meet-me-at-well.html   Before I moved from Massachusetts back to Florida, I visited with Jane Yolen and Barbara Diamond Goldin to talk about their joint book of original feminist midrash, Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible . We sat down in Jane's sunny kitchen and they just let it all pour out; I hardly needed to ask any quest...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-2019-sydney-taylor-book-manuscript.html   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 th...

SHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2019/01/beyond-holocaust-and-holidays-writing.html   "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. A stellar faculty will lead discussions on issues both practical and philosophical. For this e...

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...

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...

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 Li...

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" experie...

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'...