The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Uprising by Jennifer A. Nielsen Scholastic Press (imprint of Scholastic, Inc), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Judy Ehrenstein Buy at Bookshop.org Based on the life of Lidia Durr Zakrzewski, this is a fictionalized account of Poland under the Nazi occupation, as experienced by Lidia and her well-to-do family in Warsaw. They are not Jewish but seem to have good relationships with the Jews around them, including employing Doda as a housekeeper. Lidia is a headstrong, confident pre-teen as the book begins, talented at the piano, but the object of her mother's constant criticism, unlike her older brother, Ryszard and the memory of a long dead sister, Krystina. With Germany's invasion, life changes suddenly. Papa joins the army and is not seen again. With the months and years of war and its deprivations, Lidia grows to be an independent and resourceful young woman, determined to get an education, help others, and join the Resistance. When Doda and her mother, Bubbe are forced ...

Trajectory by Cambria Gordon Scholastic Press, 2024 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Rochelle Newman-Carrasco Buy at Bookshop.org When we first meet our protagonist, 17-year-old Eleanor, it’s a Friday night in 1942. Her mom expects her daughter to help with the Shabbos meal. This means Eleanor will have to put away her magazine, which is really being used to hide her math book. Young Eleanor has named Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom she shares a name, as her guardian angel and often uses her quotes to summon confidence. At school, the name Nervous Nellie stuck. And, the fact is, Eleanor is often scared. Her family in Poland is a constant worry. And her passion for mathematics is dampened because she believes she was responsible for her father, a brilliant and renowned mathematician, having a stroke. How could she possibly pursue a math career when her father is no longer able to function in this arena? Still, she is accidentally identified as a math genius and recruited to be one of a smal...

Artifice by Sharon Cameron Scholastic Press, 2023 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Merle Eisman Carrus Buy at Bookshop.org Artiface is a thrilling novel that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat with their heart in their throat until the last page of the book. From the first page until the last we are concerned about Isa de Smit’s welfare. Isa is a young woman in Amsterdam, who lived a colorful, exciting life with her parents above their small art gallery until the Nazis invaded. Now, her mother has died, her father seems depressed and uncommunicative and her best friend Truus has joined the secretive resistance. The Nazis have started buying and confiscating all the artwork of the Dutch painters. To get money for herself and her father to stay in their gallery, Isa takes a huge risk, bringing a forged copy of a Rembrandt painting her talented father has painted and selling it to the Nazis. Isa finds out that Truus is working to smuggle Jewish children out of Amsterdam and needs m...

Destination Unknown by Bill Konigsberg Scholastic Press (imprint of Scholastic), 2022 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Emily Roth   Buy at Bookshop.org   In 1987, when two gay teens living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan meet by chance, both of their lives are forever changed. Micah is introverted and worried about upsetting his liberal Jewish parents when he inevitably comes out of the closet, while CJ is openly and unapologetically out. Micah finds himself instantly drawn to CJ, even though CJ compulsively lies to keep his past a secret. As Micah and CJ grow closer, and as Micah struggles to figure out if their connection is platonic or romantic, the AIDS crisis looms as a constant invisible threat over everything. Micah and CJ both go on incredibly compelling emotional journeys over the course of the novel, and secondary characters, such as Micah’s parents and his boss, are equally complex and well-drawn. Teen readers will enjoy the pop culture references and cameos from...

Best Wishes by Sarah Mlynowski Scholastic Press, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacey Rattner Buy at Bookshop.org Becca lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her mom and brother, Brahm. Her parents have been divorced for a while but her Dad moved recently to California and this will be Becca’s first birthday without him. She also seems to be losing her best friend Harper, who is becoming more interested in chess,n ew friend Georgette, and Friendstagram than hanging out with Becca. But when Becca receives a mysterious box containing a magical bracelet, her life changes instantly. “Speak one wish to make it true,” the note attached to the bracelet says. “I wish I had friends. Not just one friend. But lots and lots of friends. So many friends,” Becca wishes. Suddenly, everyone, including her principal and teacher, wants to be her friend. At first, of course, it’s great. The wish worked! Best present ever! “Better than a gift certificate…better than a phone,” thinks ...

The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs by Chana Siefel, illustrated by Susan Gal Scholastic Press, 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeannette Brod Buy at Bookshop.org In The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs , Chana Stiefel and Susan Gal have created a fitting tribute to the creator of the Tower of Life (or Tower of Faces) at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Professor Yaffa Eliach spent much of her professional life gathering photos, diaries, and stories from the village of Eishyshok that her family fled as the Nazis invaded. When charged with creating a Holocaust memorial for the Museum, she traveled across continents and into the homes of Holocaust survivors to gather nearly 6,000 photographs from inhabitants of her town. She hoped to create a memorial that would capture the dignity and humanity of the townspeople who lived ordinary lives in unsuspecting innocence ...

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...

You Are a Star, Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Dean Robbins, illustrated by Sarah Green Scholastic Press (imprint of Scholastic), 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org This picture book biography of the famed jurist is told in the first-person. With its short punchy phrasing and relatively large sans-serif font, it is aimed at slightly younger audiences than its predecessors, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg:The Case of R.B.G. vs. Inequality by Jonah Winter and I Dissent!: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark by Debbie Levy. It is also the only picture book biography of her written since her death. With sentences like, “Would you believe that my school even banned women from the library?” and attention paid to Ginsburg’s other interests, like Greek mythology (when she was a child), dancing, and opera (throughout her life), and others, this biography makes Ginsburg relatable. The realistic illustrations which include Ginsburg enjoying her many hobbies, holdin...

Bluebird by Sharon Cameron Scholastic Press Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org Sharon Cameron’s BLUEBIRD begins in August 1946 with Eva arriving in New York City from war-torn Berlin. Chapter Two begins in February 1945, where sixteen-year-old Inge steals her father’s car to go on a joy ride and giggles with her friend Annemarie about kissing her mother’s chauffeur, even though she’s all but engaged to Rolf, a friend of Papa’s. In America, Eva is on a mission—not the one the US government assigned to her—to mete out justice for the innocent. In Germany, Inge’s world falls apart with the Führer’s death and her discovery of the truth of her father’s work in his camp. These seemingly separate stories are soon braided together into one cohesive storyline.  An idea for a story often begin with the question, “What if?” What if a German girl, an active member in the League of German Girls, though she never seems to measure up to pure Nazi standards, discovers ...

The Boy Who Failed Show and Tell by Jordan Sonnenblick, illustrated by Marta Kissi Scholastic Press Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Beth L. Gallego Buy at Bookshop.org Jordan Sonnenblick takes us back to his childhood with this lightly-fictionalized account of his own fourth-grade year. It gets off to a rough start. He doesn’t get past the first day before breaking one of Mrs. Fisher’s Rules for Successful and Mature Fourth Graders. He has always had trouble sitting still and paying attention, and his new asthma medication has made it worse. His pet garter snake, Hector, unexpectedly gives birth to a whole bunch of baby snakes that need new homes. And his parents sign him up for drum lessons, but he doesn’t have a drum at home - he has to practice on a large dictionary.   Jordan faces indignities and setbacks with determination and wry humor. He is a good-natured, likable tween boy trying to figure out the sometimes baffling world around him. Marta Kissi’s black-and-whit...

 One Small Hop by Madelyn Rosenberg Scholastic Press Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org One Small Hop is a surprising departure for author Madelyn Rosenberg from her other middle grade novels, This is Just a Test and Not Your All-American Girl (both co-written with Wendy Wan-Long Shang). Those books are both set in the 1980s and tell stories of young teens dealing with typical issues involving school, friendship, and family. In contrast, One Small Hop is a tale of a not-so-distant future devastated by climate change. In the small shore town of Town Harbor, Maine, Jonathan “Ahab” Goldstein and his friends come upon something rare and wondrous- a real, live bullfrog. They should turn the frog over to the Environmental Police Force. But the EPF is completely inept, and Ahab worries that the frog will die in the agency’s care. No, this might be the last bullfrog in the country, and Ahab and his friends decide they must find it a mate on ...

 I Am Defiance: A Novel of WWII by Jenni L. Walsh Scholastic Press Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Chava Pinchuck Buy at Bookshop.org This fictional story is narrated in the first person, present by Brigitte Schmidt, a twelve-year-old girl living in Munich in the early 1940s. She goes to Jungmädelbund (Young Girls’ League) (JM) meetings with her best friend Marianne. Their group leader, Elisabeth, encourages the girls to “report” to her, and Brigitte is conflicted. Her older sister Angelika had polio, and she and her father fear that if people notice her limp, she will be sent away. Brigitte often feels this tension of whether she is a “good German” or a good daughter and sister when she does not agree with the anti-Semitic dogma taught at JM meetings. When Angelika has to fulfill her national service requirement by working in a munitions factory in Ulm, she meets the charismatic Sophie, who will be attending university with her. Soon there are more secrets in Brigitte’s house, as...

 The Poetry of Secrets by Cambria Gordon Scholastic Press Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Cheryl Fox Strausberg Buy at Bookshop.org Isabel Perez is a 16 year old in Trujillo, Spain in 1481. While she longs to be a poetess, she faces the reality that she is of marriageable age and her parents are antsy to get her married off. Especially since her family is hiding a dark secret: they are Jewish. This dual life they lead makes them cautious about the people they come into contact with and motivates them to arrange Isabel’s marriage with a secure Old Christian family. It becomes even more urgent once it is clear that the Inquisition is coming. One fateful day on her way home from a poetry reading, Isabel meets a good looking young man. Diego is equally as intrigued about Isabel, and the two begin meeting in secret and eventually fall in love. Diego, from impeccable Old Christian lineage, knows that his family will never consent for him to marry a New Christian girl, but continues to ho...

It's My Party and I Don't Want To Go by Amanda Panitch Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rachel Simon Buy at Bookshop.org Ellie Katz has a plan. Well, many plans. Her bat mitzvah is coming up and she does not want to have it. Sometimes she can’t breathe when she has to do things in front of people, like when she went up to light the candles at her sister’s bat mitzvah two years ago. She can’t imagine having to read from the Torah, say the blessings, and give a speech at her own bat mitzvah. So together with her best friend Zoe, Ellie devises ways to make sure her bat mitzvah doesn’t happen. From canceling the venue to shocking the DJ to starting a food fight to deter the caterer, Ellie’s sure her bat mitzvah won’t go through. But when her parents find out what is going on and she and Zoe get into a fight, Ellie finds a way to make sure she does her bat mitzvah...her way. This middle grade book examines the themes of the Jewish rite of passage of becoming a woman in the community...

The Light in Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Stacy Mozer In The Light in Hidden Places, sixteen-year-old Stefania has to decide whether to risk her life and the life of her six-year-old sister Helena to hide a group of Jewish people when the Germans invade her town. Based on a true story, Stefania, who had been living and working with a Jewish family before the war, knows that the way the Jews in her town are being treated is not right. So when the son of her former boss shows up broken at her door after jumping off a moving train, Stefania knows that she has to help any way she can. She never expected that would lead her and her sister to hide thirteen Jews during her town's occupation, but even when things are at their worst, she never regrets her choice. The Light in Hidden Places is a story of heroism and hope when people and life is at its worst. It's about standing up for what you believe is right. I love how the author uses small...