The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Jewish Mindfulness for Kids by Blanca Sissa, illustrated by Camila Carrossine Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org I often say that it is harder for a person to get from zero to one than from one to a hundred. I'd add that it's hard to accomplish anything in life without the ability to sit quietly for ten minutes, even if that accomplishment is free climbing El Capitan. This is a book with a purpose: to help Jewish kids find a Jewish path into sitting quietly, breathing, and being in a mindful moment of not looking backward or forward. The text sets out the problem -- too much going on in everyone's brains, including kids' brains -- and that there is a tradition of "yishuv hada'at" (quiet, calm awareness) in Judaism. Then, Sissa and Carrossine teach kids how to get to it, Jewishly, with focus on the breath, Jewishly. Those methods of focus go through the lens of ...

Where Is Poppy? by Caroline Kusin Pritchard, illustrated by Dana Wulfkotte Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org A young girl attends the first Passover seder after the death of her beloved Poppy. So much is familiar -- "the same chasing cousins, the same squishy seats" -- but her Poppy has clearly passed away. It's hard for the young heroine emotionally, not to have this man leading the seder and influencing her life, with everything from his secret ingredient for pumping up the chicken soup to his pithy life advice when the girl would sit on his lap. Finally, though, as the adults tell her that Poppy is here, the heroine understands that Poppy lives in in their singing, Passover traditions like an orange on the seder plate, and the over-enthusiastic singing of Dayenu. Pritchard has crafted a touching story, with simple, appropriate, and equally touching art from Wulfkotte. I especially like...

Beneath the Stars by Rivkah Yudasin, illustrated by Jacky Yarhi Hachai Publishing, 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Hachai In February and March of 2003, I was in the city of Tver and the village of Vishniy Volochek, Russia, to adopt my son. I lived with a Jewish family there for a month,. I am connected to some of those folks to this day. To a person, they talked of Russian Jewish history and the dark days of official oppression. This wonderful book, ostensibly an easy-reader aimed at Orthodox Jewish kids, makes those little-known-days-to-kids-today immediate for every reader. It deserves serious Sydney Taylor Award consideration. I mean, really serious consideration. Author Rivkah Yudasin, backed by the realistic and compelling art of Jacky Yarhi, tell a story from the youth of revered rabbi Yitchak Zilber. The reader feels the threat of Stalinist denunciation as teen Zilber joins a furtive 6:00 a.m. minyan, and leins from the Torah for the first time si...

The Moving Box Sukkah by Leah Rachel Berkowitz, illustrated by Sharon Vargo Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House Publishing), 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org A few years ago on the campus of my synagogue, Adat Ari El in North Hollywood CA, Rabbi Jessica Yarkin taught a super cool religious school autumn lesson by using her car as the foundation for a sukkah. Two open doors plus the main car body plus some pine fronds, and there's room for a chair underneath. Et voilà! In The Moving Box Sukkah , author Berkowitz and illustrator Vargo do the same, in a poignant mother-son story of moving, displacement, adaptation, improvisation, and reconnection to both the distant and immediate past. The narrator is a boy whose mom has just moved him to the city from a place where sukkah-building was not hard. No dad in the picture, literally or figuratively. Here in the city, the boy longs for his transitional object from the past, a blue bla...

I Am Not Afraid: Psalm 23 for Bedtime by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, illustrated by Marta Dorado Beaming Books, 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org I first encountered Psalm 23 as a boy, reading a paperback World War II memoir I am sure was called "10,000 to 1," about an American B-17 navigator who was shot down and found himself wounded and alone on a Japanese-controlled island. The psalm gave him solace. In I Am Not Afraid , veteran author Sasso uses that famed, powerful, and comforting psalm for a short and simple text that is a variation on its timeless themes. She centers a young girl (Dorado's captivating art has her old enough to be in a regular bed and grown enough to have her toes touch the floor when she sits on the bed, old enough not to cry out instinctually to the mother we see at the book's outset, but young enough to sleep with a stuffed lamb, so...maybe age 10? 11?) who goes to bed, counts sheep, and then is beset by i...

Hanukkah, Here I Come! by D.J. Steinberg, illustrated by Sara Palacios Grosset & Dunlap (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org The Grosset & Dunlap series gets a peppy, diverse, and fun addition to its collection with this book about Hanukah. Or Chanukah. Or Hanukkah, as this book is entitled. One of the challenges of the holiday for authors is how to spell it in transliteration, so it can be searched for correctly. But I digress. This title has a lot going for it, for both Jewish and secular families. Hanukkah (I'll use the author's spelling) is unpacked in funny and engaging four-line rhyming poems, accompanied by energetic artwork. Everything from an ultra-shortened and ultra-sanitized-for-children history of the rebellions of the Maccabees (not exactly the story of Maccabees 1 and 2), to anticipation of good presents, to the intricacies of playing dreidel, to Team Applesauce or Team Sour Cream...

Eight Bright Nights by Hindy Spitz, illustrated by Jessica Liu Hachai, 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld With all the attention on diversity in children's books in general, and here at the Shmooze on Jewish books in particular, the fact remains that Orthodox Jewish practice is generally underrepresented...no matter the identity characteristics of the adherents. Attention must be paid, as Arthur Miller said, particularly because it is projected that by 2060, Orthodox Judaism will be the largest Jewish denomination in America. It's a way of life with consistency; that way of life is beautifully reflected in Hindy Spitz's book about Chanukah, Eight Bright Nights , with accurate, authentic, and often touching art by Jessica Liu. Chanukah -- that's the spelling Spitz adopts -- is a minor festival on the calendar. Spitz takes us through it in charming rhyme, never overestimating the holiday's importance (boosted for many of us by its calendar placem...

Start the Day by Vicki L. Weber, illustrated by Shirley Ng-Benitez Apples & Honey (imprint of Behrman House), 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org The very best time for kids to learn nearly anything is when they are young. This is especially true when it comes to learning a second language. Vicki L. Weber's START THE DAY, with inviting illustrations by Shirley Ng-Benitez, puts this principle to work with the Hebrew phrase for "Good morning," *boker tov.* Her board book for the youngest children is part of a series from Apples & Honey Press that includes the havdalah-centered A NEW WEEK, SHABBAT SHALOM, and more. Weber's rhyming text is simple enough for any toddler to grasp -- "good morning all, it's time to rise / and rub the sleep from rested eyes" -- and uncommonly active. Each page will give the young person being read to the opportunity to do something. They can touch their noses, or wiggle their toes. ...

If I Swam With Jonah by Pamela Moritz, illustrated by MacKenzie Haley Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House Publishing), 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org The story of the minor prophet Jonah, as contained in the biblical Book of Jonah, is in many ways a troubling tale with an ambiguous ending which finds Jonah having learned only modestly from his experience. It's read in synagogues often on Yom Kippur. In IF I SWAM WITH JONAH, author Moritz and illustrator Haley find a nifty way to bring the Jonah story to young children, in a rhyming text that creates a midrash. Moritz's cleverness is to impart the tale in the first person voice of a boy who talks to his beloved pet about a fish way bigger than the goldfish, the one that swallows Jonah when he did not want to assist the people of Nineveh as God commanded. Wisely omitted is the textual reason for Jonah's reluctance -- that Nineveh was just about the most wicked place o...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Little People, BIG DREAMS) by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara, illustrated by Judit Orosz Frances Lincoln Children's Books (imprint of The Quarto Group) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org What's left to say about Ruth Bader Ginsberg that has not been said already? That's the problem that faces every picture book author contemplating a book about her, and one that Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara solves by creating this picture book biography as part of a long series about people who go on to extraordinary things in their lives. Written in British English (Vegara is Spanish), Vegara tells a straightforward tale of RBG, ending with a death that reflected a life which was all her mother dreamed of. Vegara traces RBG's feminism back to her mom, with the mother's death having a big influence on the protagonist. The text is straight-ahead, and not afraid of an exclamation point to make a point or two. The challenge in all boo...

The Christmas Mitzvah by Jeff Gottesfeld, illustrated by Michelle Laurentia Agatha Creston Books Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org The Christmas Mitzvah by Jeff Gottesfeld nearly brought me to tears. More than once. Inspired by the real-life Al Rosen of Milwaukee, this book tells the story, in simple but effective language, of how this Jewish man volunteered to take over work for those celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve. He worked all sorts of jobs, mostly unskilled, and passed the tradition down to his children and grandchildren, as well as inspiring people around the world to substitute for others on their holy days. In a nice touch, the fictitious version of Al continues his mitzvah for exactly 36 years - twice chai (18), the Hebrew number associated with life.    The brightly colored illustrations complement the text beautifully, showing a truly diverse city. The illustrator does not shy away from depicting the physical...

I Love You, My Dear by Chaya Baron, illustrated by Nancy Munger Hachai Publishing Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld   This book is old-fashioned in its art, Orthodox in its depictions, rhyming in its text, and reverent in its tone toward the arrival of newborns in the world, and the love between traditional parents (and two older siblings) with the baby. As such, it's not for everyone. But for the people for whom it is right, or who are willing to stretch their boundaries a bit and step into a world that might not be their own, it's a winner. There's a glossary at the start for a few terms that might be unfamiliar. Munger's art shows a close Ashkenazi Orthodox family, with enough variance in skin color -- especially in a grandmother -- that it's impossible to code everyone as white. Another nifty art feat, supported by Baron's second-person voice text, is that the new arrival in the family is not named, nor specifically referred to as male or fem...

 The Great Passover Escape by Pamela Moritz, illustrated by Florence Weiser Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org Jerusalem is home to the famed Biblical Zoo, originally conceived as a place for animals named in the Tanach, but expanded to include endangered and other species. Moritz crafts a whimsical, amusing, and sometimes laugh-out-loud Passover story about three creatures in that zoo -- a kangaroo, elephant, and monkey -- who've heard about Passover from their zookeeper, and plot to escape from the zoo and attend a Passover seder. There's a lot of humor in their relative understanding of the holiday. The monkey has the facts right; the kangaroo and elephant, less so. For example, kangaroo and elephant believe that Hashem sent planes and plates, respectively to free the Hebrews from bondage. Weiser's art reflects their misunderstanding, and it's funny to see a passenger jet high ...

There Was a Young Rabbi: A Hanukkah Tale by Suzanne Wolfe, illustrated by Jeffrey Ebbeler Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org Liberal Judaism merits as many excellent religious female role models as it can muster, and Wolfe and Ebbeler tell and depict the story of an versatile and knowledgeable one in this tale that takes readers from the first night of Hanukkah to the last. The heroine is a young female rabbi who brings her family along through the joys of the holiday, in energetic rhyme that will have kids reading along with whomever is recounting it to them, or reading it aloud on their own. All the highlights of Hanukkah are here -- latkes flying above the rabbi's stove top in a four-latke flip; the menorah lit by the rabbi and her son and daughter (all in kippot, mind you); the rabbi's ten-pound-at-least kosher brisket coming out of the oven; dreidel victories; visits from the mishpocha; a brief history lesson; and even the rabbi leining a...

No Steps Behind: Beate Sirota Gordon's Battle for Women's Rights in Japan by Jeff Gottesfeld, illustrated by Shiella Witanto  Category: Picture Books Reviewer:  Meg Wiviott How does a 22-year-old Jewish woman come to write articles for the Japanese post-war constitution in 1946 that guarantee rights for women? No Steps Behind tells the amazing story of Beate Sirota Gordon. Born in Austria, reared in Japan, and educated in the United States, Beate ended up as the only “the only woman in [the] room.” Her gift for languages and her love of her adopted country, along with perseverance, persuasiveness, and stubbornness gave her the opportunity to change the lives of women in Japan. And why is it you’ve never heard this story before? Perhaps because the US government deemed Beate’s role “a security secret”. It was not until the 1990s that Beate was able to discuss her role. The history contained this beautiful picture book is complex and vast. Jeff Gottesfeld touches on ...

I Love Matzah by Freidele Galya Soban Biniashvili, illustrated by Angelika Scudamore Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld This is the perfect time to review a board book for very young children about the pleasures and perils of eating matzah, smack in the midst of the Pesach holiday itself. Biniashvili has penned a simple, short, rhyming story about a toddler child (could be a boy could be a girl, though this male reviewer initially interpreted the art as a boy) who eats matzah in many ways through the Passover holiday -- for breakfast, with cheese, with carrots, and even for dessert. The rhymes are highlighted in the text, easy enough for a child to catch as the book is read loud, and it's easy to imagine happy shouting of rhymes like fish/dish, away/tray, stroll/bowl, and noon/spoon. There are plenty of cues for the Passover holiday, too, with the child eating from special Passover plates, drinking from Passover cups, and a little brother wearing a bib that as...