Wish List

Hello from your Blog Moderators, Susan, Heidi, and Chava! As we explained in the Who Are We? section of this blog, all three of us are Past Chairs of the Real Sydney Taylor Book Award committee. We've seen a LOT of Jewish books for youth, so we have a pretty good idea of what's missing from the genre. Below is our Wish List - authors, please take note!

WE WANT MORE JEWISH BOOKS FOR YOUTH IN THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIES!

Diversity and intersectionality in everything, in every way 

LGBTQ+ themes, especially below the YA level, from board book through middle grade

Neurodiversity of all types

Graphic novels - we cannot emphasize this enough! This is the Number One request from library patrons

Fantasy - this is a major request from library patrons, but please branch out from dybbuks and golems (especially golems)

Science Fiction

Comedy, please, lots more comedy!

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) topics in Judaism 

Children's cookbooks

Books on Jewish holidays other than Hanukkah

Books set in a wider variety of locations in North America and in the rest of the world

Stories from non-Ashkenazi Jewish traditions such as Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews

Representation from all streams of Judaism, including Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Orthodox, Haredi, Non Practicing and more

Interfaith representation, including non-Jewish parents raising Jewish children

Books about Jewish music, theater, and all of the arts

Poetry 

Jewish joy! Books that focus purely on happy Jewish experiences without reference to Jewish suffering

Immigration stories that are not centered around Ellis Island or the Holocaust

Nonfiction books about Israel

Stories about Israel that are not travelogues

Board books, Early readers, and Early chapter books 

Folktales that are not Chelm stories

Jewish life cycle events that are not b'nai mitzvahs

Jewish stories with contemporary settings

Depictions of contemporary antisemitism 

Middle grade and YA books that are not about the Holocaust

Traditional Torah stories that are not Noah's Ark or Creation

Stories from the Midrash and Talmud

Biographies on Jewish people (especially women) that we haven't heard about before - enough already with the biographies on Anne Frank, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Albert Einstein, Hank Greenberg, and Harry Houdini, and Marc Chagall!

...And whatever else you can imagine!