The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit (Mostly)

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 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.

Visit www.bookoflifepodcast.com for the looong list of links to the resources and titles mentioned in this episode.

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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!

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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 [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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 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 https://www.nancychurnin.com/ for the teacher guides and projects she describes in our interview, as well as her blog The Kids Are All Write, https://www.nancychurnin.com/thekidsareallwrite. When asked for Tikkun Olam recommendations, Nancy suggested supporting Room to Read, https://www.roomtoread.org/ a nonprofit that seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in low-income communities by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education.

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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 accept his Sydney Taylor Book Award, and we got to play one of those games together along with a roomful of other authors, illustrators, and librarians.

Here's your chance to listen in as we play a round of Superfight: A Game of Absurd Arguments. First we'll hear the description of the game from Jonathan's May 2019 appearance on The Book of Life podcast. Then we'll hear a clip of me versus Jonathan Auxier in actual gameplay.

Just so you know, the game was ultimately won by illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky, who was at the conference to receive the Sydney Taylor Book Award for All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah. His Superfight character was Gal Gadot (because he drew the card letting him pick a favorite actor), who was unaffected by impact, but who had no depth perception. He won a badminton challenge against a tween werewolf with jellyfish instead of hands. That's Superfight for you!

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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 audience of Judaica librarians.

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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 ALL readers), and they even turned their campaign into a book called Muslims in Story.

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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
• The Harriet Hamsterbone series

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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 children kidnapped after the expulsion from Spain and enslaved on the island of São Tomé, off the coast of West Africa.

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.

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 family life.

The podcast Kidlit These Days honors Jewish American Heritage Month by interviewing friend-of-The-Book-of-Life Lesléa Newman, and by including Jewish kidlit reading recommendations from yours truly, Heidi Rabinowitz. Listen at https://bookriot.com/listen/honoring-jewish-american-heritage/

Your feedback is appreciated! Please write to [email protected] or call our voicemail number at 561-206-2473.