The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Golemcrafters by Emi Watanabe Cohen Levine Querido, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heather Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Faye and her older brother, Shiloh, are straddling two cultures at once. Patrilineal European Jews with a Japanese American mother, the siblings struggle to feel that they belong anywhere. Faye doesn’t feel that she belongs in the Asian Student Association or the Jewish Student Association, and both she and her brother face regular antisemitic bullying. However, through the gift of clay sent by their Zeyde, Faye and Shiloh end up spending their spring break in New York City, learning the skill of crafting golems. Over the week with Zeyde, Faye discovers her own powers and abilities, as well as the indominable spirit of her ancestors. Ultimately, Golemcrafters is a story about generational trauma, but more importantly, a story about generational strength.    Faye and Shiloh interact with multiple instances of historic and contemporary antisemitism. Thes...

Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry Clarion Books (imprint of HarperCollins), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Tree. Table. Book. examines the friendship between two neighbors – Sophia Henry Winslow, 11 years old, and Sophie Gershowitz, 88 years old. Sophia, after learning that Sophie’s son suspects his mother is in the early stages of dementia, takes it upon herself to prove her friend is mentally fit, and therefore, will not need to move out of her home. Armed with a friend’s father’s copy of the Merck manual, Sophia “tests” her friend’s ability to complete tasks; for example, Sophie’s abstract reasoning is tested when she is asked to determine what the words cat, dog, hamster and gerbil have in common. After passing some “tests” and failing others, Sophia revisits one test over and over – a short-term memory test, in which Sophie is told three words and then is asked to recall the words after three minutes have passed. Trying to stack the d...

Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar Nancy Paulsen Books (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Following four girls in the same family line, Across So Many Seas explores important Jewish moments in history. Characters Benvenida, Reina, Alega, and Paloma bear witness to such events as the Expulsion of Jews from Spain following Alhambra Decree of 1492, the Cuban literacy campaign in 1961, and the flight of Cuban children to the United States via Operation Pedro Pan in 1962. Each girl, seemingly isolated within her timeline, is never truly alone. Throughout the novel there are the ever-present connections of music, heritage foods, and the use of Ladino words and phrases which help bridge gaps between each generation of the Sephardic family. Ultimately, the interconnectedness between each character in the book is brought to a head when Reina, Alega and Paloma all travel to Spain together in a final crossing of the sea...

A Warning About Swans by R.M. Romero Peachtree Teen (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2023 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Set in Bavaria in 1880, this is the story of Hilde and her five sisters. Norse god Odin, their father and creator, has gifted each of the six sisters with the ability to bring dreams to life. Beyond this gift, Odin gives each sister a cloak which grants them a unique skill, in addition to allowing the girls to take the shape of a swan when wearing the cloak. Hilde’s unique gift is the ability to comfort and usher newly-deceased souls into the afterlife. Six years after gaining her talent, Hilde has struggled under the weight of her task and seeks to experience the human world in her human shape, away from constant death and suffering. Meeting a young man named Baron Maximillian von Richter, Hilde finds an opportunity to put aside her responsibilities and live amongst the humans in her human form. Hilde spends the next few mo...

Questions I am Asked About the Holocaust: Young Readers Edition by Hédi Fried; translated from the Swedish by Alice E. Olsson, illustrated by Laila Ekboir Scribble Books, 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Written by survivor Hédi Fried, and adapted for young audiences from the 2017 original edition, this book is a collection of questions which Hédi is frequently asked when lecturing at schools. Early in the book, Hédi writes “One of the lessons from the Holocaust is this: never get used to injustice.” This idea sets the tone of much of the book – Hédi’s life story and subsequent answers to questions she is asked surround the idea that it is only with education and proactive efforts that we can both remember the Holocaust while also working to prevent such atrocities from occurring again. Readers learn that Hédi was nineteen when, on May 17, 1944, she arrived Auschwitz. Alongside her sister, Hédi was sent to three different labor camps over th...

Stars of the Night: The Courageous Children of the Czech Kindertransport  by Caren Stelson, illustrated by Selina Alko Carolrhoda (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Opening with the Talmud quote “save one life, save the world,” Stars of the Night tells the nonfiction story of a group of children. With narration in the third person plural, the reader is transported to Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1939. With a group of Jewish children ages from 7 to 10, we are shown scenes of sunny afternoon picnicking with mothers and hot chocolate-filled café nights with fathers. However, by November 1938, “something happened,” and the city of Prague is surrounded by tent camps filled with war refugees. Soon, the children begin to experience threats from local children, and the parents of Prague beginning making “arrangements” with a mysterious and unnamed man. These nebulous arrangements, we find out later, come to fru...

Some Kind of Hate by Sarah Darer Littman Scholastic, 2022 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org This is a tough book to read. Author Sarah Darer Littman acknowledges as much in a note before the narration begins. I will admit, I read the statement and I did not take it at face value – as a grizzled YA lit reader, I tend to believe that I’ve seen it all, so to speak. But, this book represents the very first YA book about online radicalization I’ve ever read, and true to its warning. I am left rattled. Some Kind of Hate is a dual-perspective narrative of two friends, Jake and Declan. The story begins when both boys are 15 years old, follows both of their lives for about a year and a half, and then the narrative skips two years, ending when the boys are around 18 years old. Readers meet Declan first, a baseball pitcher with great potential. The next chapter is narrated by Jake, Declan’s best friend and baseball teammate. The boys are different in two dis...

Grape, Again! by Gabriel Arquilevich Regal House Publishing, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Grape Borokovich is fresh off of a suspension for accidentally punching a teacher in the arm. During his suspension, Grape has wrestled with the “spiders in his brain,” or his impulses which drive many of his thoughts and actions. Grape, Again! picks up where Arquilevich’s Grape! , the first book of this series, ended. Set in 1976 in California, and styled as an epistolary novel, each chapter is a diary entry addressed to Grape’s friend Lou (who, in Grape! , moved to New York). In the same vein as the Joey Pigza series, Grape, Again! explores a young man’s life as he moves through school and adolescence, all while balancing his impulses towards undesirable behavior. With new friends, old friends, and bullies turned friends, Grape, Again! covers six months of Grape’s life, including the first three months of Grape’s first year in junior high school...

Signs of Survival: A Memoir of the Holocaust by Renee Hartman with Joshua M. Green Scholastic, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Based on video testimonial recorded in 1979, Signs of Survival tells the stories of two sisters, Renee and Herta, and their experiences during the Holocaust. Renee, who is hearing, and Herta, who is deaf, recount their childhoods in Bratislava, the capital of what was once Czechoslovakia. The story begins in 1939, with the Nazi invasion of Bratislava, and the family being pushed into a ghetto. Through careful maneuvering by their parents, Renee and Herta are sent to live in the foothills or the Tarta Mountains, masquerading as Christians by 1943. However, the sisters are soon deported to Bergen-Belson concentration camp. Readers learn about Renee and Herta’s lives in Bergen-Belsen, their liberation, and their eventual lives in the United States. As this book is based on video testimonials of both Renee and Herta, th...