The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Nothing Could Stop Her: The Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber by Rona Arato, illustrated by Isabel Muñoz Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jeanette Brod Buy at Bookshop.org After reading Nothing Could Stop Her: The Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber , I wish I had known the subject of this middle grade biography. Ruth Gruber was born in Brooklyn in 1911 to Jewish Russian immigrant parents. She lived a life that made her parents both fearful and proud. "Courageous" is the right word to describe a woman whose life included adventures as a journalist and activist. She lived to be 105. The biography focuses on Ruth’s early life. It presents a portrait of a curious, smart and fearless young woman who seized opportunity whenever and wherever it presented itself. She graduated high school at fifteen, earned a master’s degree in German at eighteen and completed a doctorate in Germany on Virginia Woolf in an unprecedented one year.

 The Singer and the Scientist by Lisa Rose, illustrated by Isabel Muñoz Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karin Fisher-Golton Buy at Bookshop.org In this picture book, almost all the action takes place on one evening in 1937—an evening that speaks  volumes about the people involved and the times when they lived. African American singing icon Marian Anderson performed that night before an all-white audience at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey. Young readers will get a sense of what that meant in 1937—for Ms. Anderson to see no one who looked like her in the audience, for the people who had just enthusiastically applauded her to ignore her after the show, and for her to be denied access to a hotel room because of the color of her skin. Enter the famous Jewish physicist Albert Einstein, on the surface so different—his wild hair and wrinkled clothing contrasting with Ms. Anderson’s impeccable outfit and click