The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Harboring Hope: The True Story of How Henny Sinding Helped Denmark's Jews Escape the Nazis by Susan Hood HarperCollins, 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Meira Drazin Buy at Bookshop.org Toward the end of Harboring Hope there is a quote attributed to the Israeli-Danish journalist Herbert Pundik: “About 99 percent of the Jews in Denmark survived while 98 percent of Poland’s three million Jews perished.” Harboring Hope is the story of how the Danish people saved the Jews of their country. The nonfiction middle grade book written in free verse is anchored by the story of 22-year-old Henny Sinding, who with the crew of the small but intrepid Gerda III, successfully smuggled more than 300 Jews across the water to Sweden— ten to fifteen men, women and children at a time in the fish hold. The breadth and extent of research, including oral testimonies and other primary sources, is ambitious and expertly integrated, not only into a cohesive and riveting story, but also into free verse...

Honey and Me by Meira Drazin Scholastic, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jacqueline Jules Buy at Bookshop.org We meet eleven-year-old Milla on a Saturday morning as she follows Honey through the men’s section of their Orthodox synagogue. The two girls are long-time friends and neighbors. Milla loves spending time at Honey’s house with her large bustling family and easy-going mother. Even though they are only a few months apart in age, Milla looks up to Honey, admiring her social skills, even with adults. In the opening scene, Milla reflects that she would never have the chutzpah to ask an adult for what she wants the way Honey does. Later in the story, Milla compares her own outlook to Honey’s: “where I see roadblocks, she see different routes, or that a roadblock might really only be those orange traffic cones that can simply be picked up and moved away.” Milla’s reluctance to assert herself is an important part of this friendship story. Milla worries that she is like the willow...

Lines of Courage by Jennifer A. Nielsen Scholastic Press, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Meira Drazin Buy at Bookshop.org Lines of Courage is a sweeping, ambitious middle grade novel about World War I. The book follows young adolescents Felix from Austro-Hungary, Elsa from Germany, Juliette from France, Kara from Britain, and Dmitri from Russia. Their lives criss-cross and overlap in "deus ex machina" kinds of ways—including through a war medal, a knitted hat, a stitched red star, and homing pigeons—and the reader is shown how even people whose countries are at war with each other do not need to be enemies. The novel begins with Felix Baum witnessing the assassination of crown prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. As the war starts and his father, a sergeant in the Austro-Hungarian army, goes off to fight, Felix's hometown of Lemberg becomes occupied by the Russians (who have joined Bosnia against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire). As the Russians be...

LINKED by Gordon Korman Scholastic Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Meira Drazin Buy at Bookshop.org When a large swastika spray-painted in red is found in the middle school of a small quiet town in Colorado at the opening of Gordon Korman’s new book LINKED, everyone is shocked. Who would do such a thing? And why? The school takes swift and immediate action, organizing a comprehensive tolerance program that spans weeks. But this is when things get interesting from a narrative structure, because rather than the tolerance training being the solution, neatly tying things up ... more swastikas begin appearing. Law enforcement, residents of the town and the principal of the middle school are flummoxed: now what? The kids feel helpless and enraged. Inspired by the famous 1998 Paper Clips Project by eighth graders from Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee, the students at Korman’s Chokecherry Middle School respond by coming up with their own plan to try to understand the enormity of the Holoca...

 Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli Balzer & Bray (imprint of Harperteen) Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Meira Drazin   Buy at Bookshop.org In Becky Albertalli’s newest novel, KATE IN WAITING, theater kid Kate and her talented best friend Anderson always share crushes—it’s only fun when they can pine after the same boy together, dissecting every smile glanced their ways, every infinitesimal interaction, all while secure in the ultimate relationship: their own friendship. But when their theater summer camp crush Matt shows up in their school, things begin to go off-script. Kate feels left out when Andy and Matt both get into an exclusive drama class meant for seniors, (even though a timetable snafu means next-door neighbor Noah has been assigned it too although he can’t sing to save his life and has never shown any interest in theater.) But Kate finally gets a lead role in the musical, and is playing opposite Matt—a role which includes a kiss. Kate and Andy try to lay dow...

 The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family by Sarah Kapit Dial Books (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Meira Drazin Buy at Bookshop.org Told from alternating perspectives of neurodivergent sisters Lara and Caroline Finkel, THE MANY MYSTERIES OF THE FINKEL FAMILY by Sarah Kapit follows the girls as they begin the new school year as 7th and 6th graders respectively. With her younger sister as her best friend until now, Lara feels protective when Caroline joins her middle school. But Caroline, who speaks through her tablet, wants to be just like any kid making new friends and going to classes, and feels her sister is acting unnecessarily overprotective and, frankly, interfering. But the trouble really begins to take shape when Lara, who has started her own detective agency (FIASCCO—Finkel Investigative Agency Solving Consequential Crimes Only) discovers, along with Caroline, the answer to the mystery of why their father burned the brisket. This distresse...

 Houdini and Me by Dan Gutman Holiday House Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Meira Drazin Buy at Bookshop.org In Dan Gutman’s middle grade novel HOUDINI AND ME, Harry Mancini is just a regular eleven-year-old kid living in New York City. His one claim to fame is that he lives in the same apartment another Harry used to live in: Harry Houdini, famous escape artist. Things begin to get weird though when someone claiming to be Harry Houdini—who died in 1926— starts texting Harry Manicini from an old cell phone. Of course, it must be a prank. But whoever is texting this Harry knows a lot of things only Harry Houdini himself could know—like how to do some of his most famous tricks. So when Harry Houdini gives Harry Mancini a chance to change places and escape his twenty-first century life for an hour, what could go wrong? Only the fact that Harry Mancini soon finds himself in 1921 Kansas City, in a straight jacket, being cranked nine stories into the air by his feet, forced to perform H...

  Letters from Cuba by Ruth Behar Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Meira Drazin Buy at Bookshop.org It is January 1938 and 12-year-old Esther leaves behind her mother, brothers and beloved sister Malka in their small town in Poland—where things are getting increasingly harder for Jews—to board a ship to Cuba. There she will join her father and help him earn enough money to (hopefully soon) bring the rest of the family. Esther promises her sister that she will write to her and tell her everything that happens and so proceeds Pura Belpré award-winning author Ruth Behar’s newest middle grade novel, Letters From Cuba . Although the Jewish community is in Havana, Esther’s father has taken up residence in a tiny village called Agramonte from which he can peddle his wares throughout the countryside, making the journey to Havana only when he needs to restock. Soon, through Esther’s resourcefulness and talents, including as a deft and creative dressmaker, they are able to earn more and more...

A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Meira Drazin A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan is about sixth-graders Sara and Elizabeth who bridge their outward differences to team up for cooking club and ultimately for friendship. Sara has just joined the large local Poplar Springs Middle School after having gone to a small mosque school her whole life. Looking to earn extra money and supplement her Pakistani cuisine catering business, Sara’s mom Mrs. Hameed becomes the new after-school cooking club teacher, specializing in Southeast Asian food. Elizabeth, enamored by food as well as the practical aspects of cooking for her family when her British mother’s expertise is opening a tin and buying microwavable hot pockets, excitedly takes the after-school club with her best friend Maddy, who promptly ditches her for a new cool best friend. Prickly Sara, who has to sit in the class anyway as she waits for her mom, agrees to be ...

We'll Soon by Home Again by Jessica Bab Bonde, illustrated by Peter Bergting, translated by Jessica Bab Bonde and Sunshine Barbito Reviewer: Meira Drazin Category: Young Adult Billed as a graphic novel, it’s hard to categorize WE’LL SOON BE HOME AGAIN by Jessica Bab Bonde and Peter Bergting. Published to critical acclaim in Sweden in 2018 and now published in the US by Dark Horse Comics, with translation by Bab Bonde and Sunshine Barbito, WE’LL SOON BE HOME AGAIN is a slim volume that tells the testimonies of six Holocaust survivors in graphic format. But its spare presentation packs a punch. Tobias, Livia, Selma, Susanna, Emerich and Elisabeth were all children when WWII and the Nazis cast their tentacles over their lives. As it says in the excellent foreword, the point of the book is that these children started out like “you and me”—possibly better—born into safety and comfort. And while the horrific results of racism and antisemitism were taking place, too many ...

They Went Left by Monica Hesse Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Meira Drazin Eighteen years old in 1945 when the Gross-Rosen concentration camp is liberated, Zofia Lederman’s body and mind are left shattered. But she cannot forget or give up on her promise to find her little brother Abek—the only one from her family beside her not to be sent to the left when they arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau three years before—no matter what. So begins Monica Hesse’s THEY WENT LEFT, with Zofia first setting off for her former home in Sosnowiec, Poland and then across Poland and Germany to a displaced persons camp, where everyone is trying to piece together a future from a broken past. Although I personally write contemporary Jewish literature for children, I am very thankful that Holocaust literature is still being written by authors, bought by publishers, and read by new generations of young people. And I welcome in particular books such as THEY WENT LEFT that seek to shine a light on aspec...