The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary by Alice Hoffman Scholastic, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org Alice Hoffman brings her trademark magical realism to her version of Anne Frank’s life. The book opens with a fairytale-like prologue which sets the tone, stating “Once there were two sisters. One was beautiful and well-behaved and one saw the future and stepped inside it.” That magical realism continues throughout the book with recurring motifs of black moths, magpies, and rabbits representing the Jews, and wolves representing the Nazis. The main action of the novel begins on “the day everything changed.” Immediately the reader’s curiosity is piqued: which day - other than the day when the Franks went into hiding and the day they were betrayed - could have been the one that everything changed? It turns out that it was the day that Nazi Germany began bombing The Netherlands. Hoffman could have begun the book earlier, but begi...

Little Dreidel Learns to Spin by Rebecca Gardyn Levington, illustrated by Taryn Johnson Cartwheel Books (imprint of Scholastic), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Julie Ditton Buy at Bookshop.org Every Jewish child knows how frustrating it can be to learn how to spin a dreidel. Older kids make it look so simple, but it takes persistence to get the knack to make that dreidel twirl. But, how does the dreidel feel? Rebecca Gardyn Levington has spun a sweet story about persistence that is absolutely adorable and very funny. Little Dreidel wants to spin like her older cousins. She feels like giving up. But with love and encouragement from her Bubbie, she persists and eventually feels pride in her accomplishment. The author tells the story in clever, smooth flowing rhyme. She adds lots of humor with quotes from Hanukkah sources and one very cute pun. In the very first page, we meet "Little Dreidel, made of clay, at last is dry and ready!" I loved the cute illustrations by Tary...

I Love You a Latke! by Joan Holub, illustrated by Allison Black Scholastic, 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Dena Bach Buy at Bookshop.org The rhymes and lively anthropomorphic illustrations of I Love You a Latke invite the child reader to bounce, spin and sing along with the dancing latkes, dreidels, musical instruments, and Hanukkah gifts that are the characters of this activity book. The playful narrative centers less on the traditions of Hanukkah, concentrating instead on the more universal, sensory aspects of the holiday. Even the sense of touch is included through the touch-and feel features. Part of a series of holiday books that includes secular and non-Jewish holidays, most of the specific Hanukkah content in the book (aside from the pun of the title) is contained in Allison's Black’s bold, gold, blue and white illustrations. In Black’s depictions of smiling candles on a Hanukkah menorah, silly-faced dreidels, and Hanukkah gelt, it is notable that the dreidels ...

Some Kind of Hate by Sarah Darer Littman Scholastic, 2022 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org This is a tough book to read. Author Sarah Darer Littman acknowledges as much in a note before the narration begins. I will admit, I read the statement and I did not take it at face value – as a grizzled YA lit reader, I tend to believe that I’ve seen it all, so to speak. But, this book represents the very first YA book about online radicalization I’ve ever read, and true to its warning. I am left rattled. Some Kind of Hate is a dual-perspective narrative of two friends, Jake and Declan. The story begins when both boys are 15 years old, follows both of their lives for about a year and a half, and then the narrative skips two years, ending when the boys are around 18 years old. Readers meet Declan first, a baseball pitcher with great potential. The next chapter is narrated by Jake, Declan’s best friend and baseball teammate. The boys are different in two dis...

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...

Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King Scholastic, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heidi Rabinowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Mac's sixth-grade reading group discovers that their school copies of the Holocaust classic The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen have been censored with black rectangles. The blacked-out the passages, "hands over her breasts" and "She motioned toward her own undeveloped chest," take place in a harsh concentration camp setting and are in no way sexual, but their teacher is uncomfortable with these references to human body parts and thinks she is protecting the twelve-year-old readers with this action. Mac and his friends resent being dictated to, lied to, and not being taken seriously by the adults around them. They organize and bring the matter to the school board, helping their uptight town wake up: "Until we started our protests, people thought they had to follow rules no matter how weird the rules were. We reminded ...

The Honeys by Ryan LaSala PUSH (imprint of Scholastic), 2022 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Stacey Rattner Buy at Bookshop.org Right from the start, you know that the elite sleepaway camp in this story, Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy, is not like any camp you may be familiar with. It’s no Ramah or Tel Yehudah, that’s for sure. Mars’s twin sister, Caroline, is deep in the heart of the culture of Aspen, especially her cabin and friends, the oldest girls in camp, called The Honeys. These are her people. This, of course, is relatable to anyone who has attended or sends their own kids to camp. But when Caroline runs away from camp and in an unfortunate series of events, dies suddenly at home, genderfluid Mars, who never completely felt comfortable at camp, makes the decision to return to Aspen and find out what really happened . Aspen is filled with history and connections. Some we learn right away; others a bit later. Who can Mars trust? Who is friend? Who is foe? While trying to figure...

Signs of Survival: A Memoir of the Holocaust by Renee Hartman with Joshua M. Green Scholastic, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Based on video testimonial recorded in 1979, Signs of Survival tells the stories of two sisters, Renee and Herta, and their experiences during the Holocaust. Renee, who is hearing, and Herta, who is deaf, recount their childhoods in Bratislava, the capital of what was once Czechoslovakia. The story begins in 1939, with the Nazi invasion of Bratislava, and the family being pushed into a ghetto. Through careful maneuvering by their parents, Renee and Herta are sent to live in the foothills or the Tarta Mountains, masquerading as Christians by 1943. However, the sisters are soon deported to Bergen-Belson concentration camp. Readers learn about Renee and Herta’s lives in Bergen-Belsen, their liberation, and their eventual lives in the United States. As this book is based on video testimonials of both Renee and Herta, th...

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...

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...

I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944 by Lauren Tarshis Scholastic Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Bridget Hodder   Buy at Bookshop.org Both the story and the excellent back matter of I SURVIVED THE NAZI INVASION 1944 by Lauren Tarshis inform young readers in an exciting, effective way about a particular facet of the Jewish Holocaust experience. The book explores, from a child's point of view, the complex interaction of Nazi invaders with the local populations (both resisters and collaborators) and the ethical and emotional struggles involved. The text is well-researched and will provide all readers, Jews and non-Jews, with a window into that troubled time. Tarshis accomplishes all this education almost invisibly, while enthralling kids with an exciting, fast-paced story. This is clearly one good reason her I SURVIVED... books are popular in many classrooms, and this book is no exception. In order to amp up the adrenaline level, the series in general does emphasize the violence of ...

 Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen Scholastic  Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Jennifer Nielsen’s newest middle grade historical fiction, Rescue , returns to the World War II time period of her Sydney Taylor Notable Book, Resistance , but with France as its setting. In Rescue , as in her other books of historical fiction, Nielsen gives us a courageous and resourceful heroine, Meg Kenyon, who lives in a rural area of Occupied France with her mother and grandmother. Meg’s father has gone to fight/spy against the Nazis, and the family has not heard from him in the two years that he has been away. When Meg finds an injured British captain in the barn behind her grandmother’s house, he offers her a way to bring her father home: If Meg leads a family of three out of France and into Spain, they’ve promised that her father will go free. All Meg has to help her on the hazardous journey is an encoded note from her father and a backpack of supplies from t...

Not Your All-American Girl by Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz In 2017, Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang came out with This is Just a Test , the story of David Da Wei Horowitz, a 12-year-old, half-Jewish, half-Chinese boy, set in the 1980s. Now, in 2020, the authors have written Not Your All-American Girl , the story of David’s younger sister, Lauren. In Not Your All-American Girl , Lauren faces friendship hiccups and the thinly veiled prejudice of her school drama teacher. Lauren sings beautifully and kills her audition for the school musical, but her best friend Tara is cast as the lead. The drama teacher tells Lauren that she just doesn’t look like the all-American girl that Tara embodies. Lauren’s musical talent, along with her dark hair and culturally mixed features, land her in the ensemble. Lauren is disappointed and confused, but she ends up making friends with other ensemble members, even as her friendship wi...