The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Undaunted Ursula Franklin: Activist, Educator, Scientist by Monica Franklin & Erin Della Mattia Second Story Press, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Amy Blaine Buy at Bookshop.org Student. Survivor. Newcomer. Quaker. Mother. Environmentalist. Scientist. These are but a few of the words used to describe the literal and figurative chapters in a labor of love titled Undaunted Ursula Franklin: Activist, Educator, Scientist , a biography carefully and skillfully written by her daughter Monica Franklin and co-author Erica Della Mattia.    The only child of a Protestant archeologist and a Jewish art historian, Ursula Maria Martius was born in Munich in 1921. Ursula was a curious and inquisitive child. She began her higher educational career just as Hitler was coming to power. By the time Ursula was awarded a scholarship to England, it was too late: the war broke out and Ursula had to remain in Germany. She attended the University of Berlin in perilous circumstances and stud...

Standing Together: The Story of Natan Sharansky by Leah Sokol Green Bean Books, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Standing Together is a biography of refusenik and human rights leader Anatoly Sharansky, who would later change his name to Natan Sharansky and fight for the freedom of Jews in the former Soviet Union. Sokol’s book follows Sharansky’s life from his childhood in Soviet Ukraine through his harrowing years as a political prisoner in a Russian jail to his role today as a Jewish advocate for freedom across the world. The book is important because it’s unlikely that young readers have ever heard of the refuseniks, and Sharansky is a genuine contemporary hero. Sokol does not shy away from discussing the truly difficult times of Sharansky’s life, particularly his years in jail, where he endured the “punishment cell” and psychological torture from the KGB. However, everything is described in an age-appropriate way that emphasizes Sharansky’s ...

Chutzpah Girls: 100 Tales of Daring Jewish Women by Julie Esther Silverstein and Tami Schlossberg Pruwer The Toby Press (imprint of Koren Publishers), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Doreen Robinson Buy at Koren Mazel Tov to the authors of Chutzpah Girls , Julie Esther Silverstein and Tami Schlossberg Pruwer, for writing a must-have collective biography featuring 100 Jewish females with guts! Each spread shares an inspiring story of a Jewish female from around the world and highlights Jewish heroines throughout history, from Ancient Israel through the 21st Century. Some of these fascinating Jewish women fought for feminism and Zionism, and fought against racism and antisemitism; some broke codes or broke glass ceilings. These stories feature Jewish women with incredible intelligence, some of whom have roles in intelligence, cybersecurity and defense. They are sports champions and champions of causes they believe in. Some fought as battlefield warriors and others fought everyday b...

Hiding from the Nazis in Plain Sight: A Graphic Novel Biography of Zhanna and Frina Arshanskaya by Lydia Lukidis, illustrated by Aleksandar Sotirovski Capstone Press, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jeanette Brod   Buy at Bookshop.org There are as many Holocaust stories of survival as there are survivors. We tell stories of the camps, the Holocaust, by bullets, hidden children, and now Hiding from the Nazis in Plain Sight . This true story is told in a very concise graphic novel. There are two sisters who are musical prodigies and somehow escape the 1941 roundup of Jews in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Taken in by the families of schoolmates, the sisters assume false identities as orphans. In the orphanage, they find refuge in their music. Their piano playing wafts through open windows and despite their efforts to keep a low profile, their artistry propels them into the spotlight. They are offered musical scholarships and invited to perform for the occupying German soldiers. In 1945, wh...

Abzuglutely! Battling, Bellowing Bella Abzug by Sarah Aronson, illustrated by Andrea D'Aquino Calkins Creek (imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Rochelle Newman-Carrasco Buy at Bookshop.org Trying to describe feminist Congresswoman Bella Abzug isn’t easy to do in a few conventional words. It requires an expansive, energetic, bold, statement-driven narrative, which is what you get in Aronson’s fun and fact-filled book. Designed for young readers, it can "abzuglutely" be enjoyed by readers of all ages. To start, D'Aquino's visual style for the book communicates a lot. The vibrant color palette establishes little Bella in pinks and reds, already wearing a hat, which would become Abzug’s trademark, and already looking like she’s up to good trouble. The combined use of colored pencil, ink and crayon saturate the expressionistic illustrations with the kind of vigorous attitude Bella Abzug possessed. In addition to the engagi...

What Jewish Looks Like by Liz Kleinrock and Caroline Kusin Pritchard, illustrated by Iris Gottlieb HarperCollins, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rochelle Newman-Carrasco   Buy at Bookshop.org Both The Table of Contents and Introduction of the collective biography What Jewish Looks Like provide a road map for the way this much-needed book brings together a wide spectrum of individuals and organizations, identities and philosophies, beliefs, values, and causes. There are “Big Question” pages that add to the rich learning experience one can have with this book, no matter your own depth of involvement in all things Jewish. The authors do a good job of taking on the complexity of their topic. We are introduced to individuals and organizations in a thematic way. Tikkun Olam, for example, brings us those who are known for Repairing a Broken World. In this section alone we meet Jews from Ethopia, to Austria to Los Angeles, California. A chapter named Adam Yachid, Unique Value of Ev...

Perfect Match: The Story of Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton by Lori Dubbin, illustrated by Amanda Quartey Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karin Fisher-Golton Buy at Bookshop.org In Perfect Match , author Lori Dubbin recounts the true story of Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton’s friendship and eventual tennis doubles partnership. As the story opens Althea is already established in her skills, but as a Black American tennis player in the 1950s, she is excluded from the main tennis league. The story flashes back slightly to Angela’s childhood in England in the 1940s, when she is developing a strong interest and talent in tennis, but is unable to join any tennis club because she is Jewish. Angela esteems Althea, and when she has a chance to see her play, she takes it eagerly. Later, when an opportunity to play in the same tennis tour opens up for both of them, they meet and become friends. Eventually Althea and Angela, who both ...

One of a Kind: The Life of Sydney Taylor by Richard Michelson, illustrated by Sarah Green Calkins Creek (imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Heidi Rabinowitz Buy at Bookshop.org As readers of The Sydney Taylor Shmooze blog know, Sydney Taylor was the author of the All-of-a-Kind Family series, the first popular mainstream books to feature Jewish characters. The Association of Jewish Libraries' children's book award is named in Taylor's memory. One of a Kind is a picture book biography of Sydney Taylor, detailing her childhood, relationships, influences, career moves, and the fulfillment of her dream to become an author. Taylor's complex and active lifetime has been skillfully simplified here, with straightforward language and a thematic throughline of Syd's desire for social justice, manifested at last in the publication of All-of-a-Kind Family . The facts are based closely upon Taylor's own writings and family reco...

Ping-Pong Shabbat: The True Story of Champion Estee Ackerman by Ann Diament Koffsky, illustrated by Abigail Rajunov Little Bee Books, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Marcia Rosenthal Buy at Bookshop.org In this picture book biography, we learn the true story of Estee Ackerman. Estee learns how to play ping-pong at home and quickly develops a love for the game. Before long, she enters tournaments, beating opponents both younger and older than herself. Estee even wins a ping-pong match against one of the top professional tennis stars of all time: Rafael Nadal. She proves herself to be a skilled competitor, and her future holds much promise of becoming a champion in the sport. That opportunity comes sooner than one would have imagined. At just eleven years old, Estee has qualified for the championship match in the United States National Table Tennis Championship. But her excitement comes to an abrupt stop. She discovers that the match is scheduled to take place on Shabbat, thus cr...

Space Torah: Astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman’s Cosmic Mitzvah by Rachelle Burk, illustrated by Craig Orback Intergalactic Afikomen, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Space Torah tells the story of astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, who flew into space five times between 1985 and 1996. In its opening pages, this beautiful picture book brings readers back to Hoffman’s childhood and adolescence, when his dreams of going into space begin in earnest. When he is finally able to join a space mission, he feels profound peace and gratitude in the vastness of the cosmos and thinks about God being up there with him. He even brings Jewish items with him on his missions- a siddur, a dreidel, a mezuzah. On his flight on the space shuttle Columbia, he brings a miniature Torah scroll and as he floats in zero gravity, he performs the mitzvah of reading from the Torah. Space Torah ’s strength comes from the way it shows the deep connection that Hoffman feels between himself a...

A Party for Florine: Florine Stettheimer and Me written and illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg Neal Porter Books (imprint of Holiday House), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karin Fisher-Golton Buy at Bookshop.org In author-illustrator Yevgenia Nayberg’s A Party for Florine , a young artist visits a museum and sees something of herself in a self-portrait of Jewish-American painter Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944). The girl narrator is inspired to learn more, which makes for a natural flow into an overview of Stettheimer’s life as an artist. The story returns to the child’s world with her bountiful, imaginative ideas for the party she would like to throw for Florine. The resulting book is both a brief biography and an exuberant look into the mind of a creative child. As the child narrator concludes, “the world around me is full of color and full of surprise.” These qualities are depicted throughout the story, with goodies like “the famous artist Marcel Duchamp, so limber and elegant i...

Heroes with Chutzpah: 101 True Tales of Jewish Trailblazers, Changemakers, and Rebels by Kerry Olitzky and Deborah Bodin Cohen Ben Yehuda Press, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Amy Blaine Buy at Bookshop.org Collected biographies for young people are hot right now, and Heroes with Chutzpah is a unique and timely addition to options for middle grade and young adult readers. The biographies, covering people who have lived within the last 125 years, are not organized alphabetically or chronologically; instead, they cleverly lead into one another with a short sentence linking one personality to the next. From the book’s first profile of comedian Sarah Silverman to a later look at student activist for gun control Naomi Wadler, this collection contains a great mix of knowns and unknowns and includes Jews of differing practices, ages, races, genders, abilities, and identities. The digital illustrations, manipulations of the subject’s image, provide a clean, bold, colorful, and engaging...

Harry and the High Wire: Houdini's First Amazing Act by Julie Carpenter, illustrated by Laura Catalán Green Bean Books, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Shanna Silva Buy at Bookshop.org Picture book biography Harry and The High Wire takes place during Houdini’s childhood, when he became enthralled with a tightrope walking act at the circus. For an ordinary boy, this taste of the extraordinary sparked his first interest in the performative arts. Harry became obsessed with mastering the tightrope walk, and with the encouragement of his supportive mother, he began practicing. The message from Pirkei Avot that “according to the effort is the reward,” shows the value of putting time into following a passion and developing a craft. Central to Harry’s eventual success were the failures along the way, when perseverance and self-belief propelled him to continue. The fully fold-out book is cleverly laid out so that the art continues on the pages that eventually lay out to 4 meters wid...

Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan's Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants by Norman H. Finkelstein, illustrated by Vesper Stamper Holiday House, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeanette Brod Buy at Bookshop.org We are a nation of immigrants, but we rarely consider the obstacles to Americanization faced by new arrivals to our country. Abraham Cahan’s gift to new immigrants was a passion to help them navigate their complicated and confusing relationship to a new home. In Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan’s Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants , an award winning author and an award winning illustrator have given us a masterful biography about an important voice in American Jewish history whose legacy is probably more well known than his name. If your family was connected to the waves of immigration from Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, they probably read The Forverts in Yiddish. Despite their place of birth or national language, the Jews of those gen...

Remembering Rosalind Franklin: Rosalind Franklin and the Discovery of the Double Helix Structure of DNA by Tanya Lee Stone, illustrated by Gretchen Ellen Powers Christy Ottaviano Books (imprint of Little Brown), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jacqueline Jules Buy at Bookshop.org Remembering Rosalind Franklin begins with an author’s note warning that this story does not have a happy ending. The preface goes on to explain that sometimes people can do extraordinary things and “never even find out they made a difference.” With this preparation, the reader is ready to understand that those who do the groundwork for important scientific achievements deserve to be remembered, too.  Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 into a large Jewish family living in London, England. She enjoyed beach holidays at her grandparents’ country home where she first saw a darkroom and learned how photographs were developed. Though she lived in a time when most girls were not encouraged to pursue acade...

Yosef Medelevich: Leader of Soviet Jewry by Leah Sokol Menucha Publishers, 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Merle Eisman Carrus Buy from Menucha This is a fabulous book written for middle school readers, but also terrific for adults who are looking to learn about the life of Yosef Mendelevich and more about Soviet Jewry. It's the story of the first Refusenik who helped educate the world about the plight of the Jewish people in Russia. He lived his life as a religious Jew and survived many Russian prisons to finally realize his dream to live in Israel. This book is written in a simple style that explains the life of Yosef Mendelevich, from his childhood growing up in a Jewish home in the Soviet Union. In 1968 Yosef read Leon Uris’, Exodus and found a deep tie to Judaism and the Jewish state. His goal became to leave the Soviet Union and fly to Israel. He was part of the “Operation Wedding,” a wild scheme that he and ten other Jewish activists created to commandeer a small Russi...

Doña Gracia Saved Worlds by Bonni Goldberg, illustrated by Alida Massari Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Sydney Taylor Shmooze Editors   Buy at Bookshop.org Doña Gracia Nasi, born Beatriz de Luna, was a 16th century crypto Jew from Portugal, famous for working valiantly to save many of her co-religionists. Her history is complicated and many facts are in dispute. To simplify the story for a picture book audience, the author sometimes chooses one historical opinion over another or glosses over details. It is difficult to compress Dona Gracia's adventurous life into this format and difficult to determine the accuracy of this brief portrayal. However, the book succeeds in conveying the general outlines of Dona Gracia's life and the impressiveness of her accomplishments. The illustrations are sumptuous, with their rich colors and intricate patterns. Dona Gracia is an important historical figure and an inspiring woman,...

  She's a Mensch! Ten Amazing Jewish Women by Anne Dublin, illustrated by Ashley Wong Second Story Press, 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Judith S. Greenblatt Buy at Bookshop.org Anne Dublin, author of a biography of swimmer Bobbie Rosenfeld, among many other titles, has brought us 6 to 9 page biographies of 10 outstanding Jewish women. Part of the “Do you Know My Name” series for middle-grade readers, the book follows the series criteria for inclusion. The women are thus from around the world, born in the 20th century, and are or were activists. And, with the exception of one woman, I did not know any of their names. This is in contrast to another recent book about menschy women by Rachelle Burk and Alana Barouch, aimed at 5 to 10  year old readers, which includes household names such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Judy Blume, as well as unknowns like judo champion Rusty Kanokogi. Dublin is an experienced writer for this age group, and the vocabulary and format are perfect...