The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Couldn't Drive? (Wait! What? series) by Dan Gutman, illustrated by Allison Steinfeld Norton Young Readers, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Eva L. Weiss   Buy at Bookshop.org This engaging biography of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is told by by fictional siblings Paige and Turner, names which foreshadows the sly and playful tone of the book. The dialogue between the brother and sister is intended to make the young storytellers relatable, and include high-minded quotations ("You can disagree without being disagreeable") to bring to life the sturdy values which characterized the life of RBG. There is a timeline for context. The light-hearted exchanges between the siblings reveal period detail and the inequities of an American era remote from the experiences of twenty-first century middle grade readers. (In 1956, there were only nine women in the Harvard Law School class of 552, and the absence of ladies' bathrooms meant a ...

Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued  by Peter Sís Norton Young Readers (imprint of WW Norton and Company) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org In December 1938, Nicholas Winton, an English stockbroker, visited a friend in Prague to help hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly Jewish, who escaped the Nazi invasion of Sudetenland. Knowing that war was coming, time was running out, and something needed to be done, Nicky got started. England would give unaccompanied minors temporary admission, so working out of his hotel room, Nicky worked with desperate parents to arrange safe passage for their children. Returning to England, Nicky continued to work: finding foster families, applying for visas, and making travel arrangements. “Eight trains left Prague in the spring and summer of 1939.” A ninth train carrying 250 more children was stopped at the border on September 1, the day Germany attacked Poland. Nicky lived a g...