The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Two Pieces of Chocolate by Kathy Kacer, illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard Second Story Press, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karen Shakman Buy at Bookshop.org Two Pieces of Chocolate tells the story of an act of kindness between a woman and a child in Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp at the end of the Holocaust. The story is ultimately one of survival and hope, despite the desperate circumstances of the characters. The author does not shy away from describing the conditions of the camp, including powerful sensory details, such as the smell of “rotting eggs and bad feet and human sweat”, and the sight of humans “stumbling past like sleepwalkers.” Thus, the author paints a picture of a dark time in history without sugar coating the circumstances. However, the story conveys how people, in the face of such inhumanity, may act with selflessness, as does the child when she encounters a fellow prisoner, late in pregnancy and terribly weak. This act of kindness is at the center of the ...

Saliman and the Memory Stone by Erica Lyons, illustrated by Yinon Ptahia Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karen Shakman Buy at Bookshop.org Saliman and the Memory Stone joins a growing collection of recent books for children that paint a  diverse picture of Israeli Jews. In 1841, a young boy travels from his home in Yemen to resettle in Jerusalem as part of the First Aliyah. Young Saliman is sad to leave, afraid he will not remember his home and his village. Before he goes, he tells the goats he will always remember them and pockets a loose stone from his house and calls it his memory stone. Thus begins a journey to retain his past while heading toward his future. Lyon’s language is lyrical, capturing both the difficulty of the journey and a palpable sense of a loving family and tight-knit community, even as they must endure a long and arduous journey (which is helpfully illustrated in a map at the end of the book). Throug...

Second Chance Summer by Sarah Kapit Henry Holt Books, 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Karen Shakman Buy at Bookshop.org Second Chance Summer tells the story of two former best friends, Chloe and Maddie, and the summer they spend orbiting one another at a sleep-away performing arts camp. The two middle schoolers were friends back home, until an unfortunate incident involving a performance of The Music Man goes viral and heralds the end of the girls’ friendship. Maddie resents Chloe for the part she played in Maddie’s very public embarrassment and, while Chloe is sorry, she doesn’t quite understand what she did that was so wrong. Where Maddie is slightly awkward and a little insecure, Chloe is at home in the spotlight. Maddie has always been in her shadow, a shadow that she admits is exciting and fun, but a shadow all the same, and she has grown tired of it. At the sleep-away camp, neither girl is happy to be there with the other, and they end up in a battle of revenge that ultima...

Passover: A Celebration of Freedom by Bonnie Bader, illustrated by Joanie Stone Big Golden Books (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karen Shakman Buy at Bookshop.org The Passover story is one filled with drama and intrigue, and Bonnie Bader does the story justice in her new retelling: Passover: A Celebration of Freedom . In the spirit of the Golden Books, it is a fairly traditional and loyal retelling of the story of Moses and the Jewish people’s escape from Egypt, with iconic imagery of baby Moses in the basket, the burning bush, and the parting of the Red Sea. Bader deftly captures the highlights of the story and has great instincts for the elements that are of most interest to children who may be hearing it for the first time, or for children who are familiar with the story. Perhaps the most exciting spread of the book is when Bader covers six of the plagues, building tension as we move from itchy lice to the slaying of the first born. When we ...