The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

  The 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour took place last week, featuring interviews with winners of the REAL Sydney Taylor award on a variety of blogs, podcasts, and Bookstagram accounts. You can find links to all of those interviews in this Archive of all past blog tours, 2009-present , on The Book of Life Podcast's webpage. Scroll to the bottom to find the 2025 blog tour. Spring 2025 books have been assigned to reviewers, so watch this space for reviews of new Jewish children's/YA books, coming soon!

The Real Sydney Taylor Book Awards were announced on January 27, 2025. Below are the real winners, honors, and notable books for 2025. We've linked to the Shmooze reviews, but you'll notice that there are a few books we didn't review. We try to cover all the Jewish books published each year but sometimes we miss a few.  Listen to a podcast interview with awards chair Aviva Rosenberg on The Book of Life about this year's winners! Picture Book Winner: An Etrog from Across the Sea by Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky, illustrated by Stacey Dressen McQueen, published by Kar-Ben Picture Book Honors Joyful Song by Lesléa Newman, illustrated by Susan Gal, published by Levine Querido Rising by Sidura Ludwig, illustrated by Sophia Vincent Guy, published by Candlewick Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan's Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants by Norman H. Finklestein, illustrated by Vesper Stamper, published by Holiday House The Tree of Life: How a Holocaust S...