The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit (Mostly)

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 above. 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

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 from across the world, to create a book list addressing anti-Semitism. We crafted a list of picture books and chapter books on the theme of "standing up for each other." It's the first in the Love Your Neighbor series of book lists published by the Association of Jewish Libraries. There's a great article at Tablet Magazine about the creation of the book list series. Please use and share the Love Your Neighbor book lists as widely as you can!

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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!

https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2018/11/light-menorah-hanukkah-handbook.html

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."

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.

American Golem by Marc Lumer is a very funny picture book about a mud monster making a new life for itself in New York City. Vicki Weber of Apples & Honey Press told me all about it at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference in Boston in June 2018, and I was very flattered that she also asked for my advice about marketing the book. If YOU have any ideas for Vicki, give us a call or leave a comment at bookoflifepodcast.com.

In June 2018, Book of Life Host Heidi Rabinowitz participated on a panel with author Leslea Newman and Horn Book editors Elissa Gershowitz and Shoshana Flax, at the Association of Jewish Libraries annual conference in Boston. The topic was "Social Justice and Jewish Children's Books." Here's your chance to be a fly on the wall. Share your thoughts on the subject at bookoflifepodcast.com.

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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 2018 winners of the award. 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 4-8, 2018. For details, click here. The Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award was mentioned in the interview: click here. The National Jewish Book Award winners from the Jewish Book Council have also been announced! To see their winners, click here.

The winners of the 2018 Sydney Taylor Book Awards for the best in Jewish children's and teen literature will be announced on January 10, 2018. Chair Susan Kusel gave The Book of Life an exclusive interview that will be posted on that date. In the meantime, here is her dedication to the hardworking awards committee.

As The Book of Life goes on hiatus, we wrap up twelve years of programming with a Grand Finale. We hear from listeners and guests about their favorite interviews, and play clips from those episodes.

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