The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

The Last Words We Said by Leah Scheier Simon & Schuster Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Michelle Falkoff   Buy at Bookshop.org   Ellie, Rae, Deenie, and Danny were best friends who all attended a Jewish high school together. Now Danny is gone, and they have to deal with their problems without him. Ellie, his girlfriend, can’t accept that Danny isn’t coming back; she still sees him everywhere, though he’s not as nice to her as he used to be. Rae struggles with wanting to be more modern than their Modern Orthodox community would prefer, while Deenie has gone in the opposite direction, becoming so religious and restrictive that even her rabbi father is worried about her.   Over the course of the novel, all three girls grapple with Danny’s absence and their changing friendship. Ellie, as the narrator, thinks she’s the most affected, and the book takes us through her process of dealing with the loss of her first love. But she also learns that her friends’ issues...

They'll Never Catch Us by Jessica Goodman Razorbill (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Michelle Falkoff   Buy at Bookshop.org   Sisters Stella and Ellie Steckler share an alcoholic mother, a love of cross-country running, and an unwillingness to disclose anything about their romantic lives with one another. Their hometown is best known as the place where a series of murders happened a few years ago, and both are desperate to leave. Running seems to be the only way out, but competition for scholarships is fierce, and Stella may have already lost her chance because of an incident at a competition that got her sent to anger management.   The competition heats up when Mila Keene moves in. Mila was one of Stella’s biggest competitors, and now she could take the scholarships that Stella so desperately needs. When Mila disappears after Stella sends her a series of angry texts, it’s not long before the town jumps to the conclusion that an...

What We're Scared Of by Keren David Scholastic UK Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Michelle Falkoff Fraternal twins Evie and Lottie don’t think of themselves as Jewish—their father isn’t, and while their mother was born Jewish, she’s mostly put it behind her, other than occasionally making latkes and honey cake for holidays. But antisemitism is on the rise in their hometown of London, where their mother has a morning radio show, and when she uses her radio platform to denounce it, the girls find they have to learn more about their heritage. Funny, outgoing Evie discovers her secret crush is spouting antisemitic conspiracy theories, and she joins up with some new friends and becomes an underground activist. Shy, curious Lottie calls out her own friends’ racism and bigotry and befriends another Jewish girl named Hannah, who welcomes her into her synagogue. Their paths to understanding Judaism collide when violence erupts outside Hannah’s sister’s bat mitzvah, where Lottie is attending...

  How to Pack for the End of the World by Michelle Falkoff Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Judith S. Greenblatt Buy at Bookshop.org How to pack for the end of the world belongs to the genre of YA literature in which a group of dysfunctional young people bond together for support. Amina’s anxiety spins out of control after her family’s synagogue is firebombed. Her parents send her to the prestigious Gardner Academy in hopes that the change of scenery will help her. At the newcomers get-together the evening of her arrival the question is asked, “If you knew the world was going to end tomorrow, would you rather die along with your friends and family and everyone you’ve ever known, or live among strangers to rebuild civilization?” The is the basis for the group Amina joins the very next night. They create a game through which they struggle to learn survival skills. This pursuit is interrupted by the usual high school dramas, especially of relationships, family, and with a mystery added...

28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto by David Safier Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Michelle Falkoff In 28 Days, a teenage girl named Mira struggles with everyday life in the Warsaw ghetto and is then thrust into conflict when the Nazis send most of the ghetto’s residents to concentration camps. Initially, her biggest problems are finding food for her family and deciding whether she’s really in love with her boyfriend, Daniel. A surprise encounter with a stranger, a boy who kisses her to save her from local anti-Semites while she’s on a smuggling mission, leads her to question her relationship and to give more thought to whether she should join the growing resistance movement. Mira is initially skeptical that the resistance is necessary; she, like many in her community, believes they all just need to wait for the world to realize how much injustice is occurring. But when the ghetto’s resettlement begins, she finds herself with fewer and fewer options, especia...

It's My Life by Stacie Ramey Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Michelle Falkoff Jenna Cohen, a teenage girl with cerebral palsy, wants two things: medical emancipation (so she can have a proper say in decisions about her treatment) and Julian Van Beck (her childhood love who moved away and has now come back). The book tracks both her decision whether to move forward with legal proceedings against her parents and her developing relationship with Julian, conducted via text messages in which she keeps her identity a secret. While there are few surprises in how the two parallel tracks of the book progress, Ramey’s description of the Cohen family is loving and generous, and Julian is a charming romantic lead. Jenna does not come across as quite so feisty as the other characters perceive her to be, and her emancipation struggle might have been more convincing if readers were provided some additional detail about what her goals are versus what her parents want for her. She is a...