The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Baila the Klopper by Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod, illustrated by Shirley Waisman Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Susan Tarcov Buy at Bookshop.org Every morning Baila the Klopper goes all around her tiny shtetl “klopping” on people’s doors to wake them up. It’s her responsibility to make sure everyone in the town is up in time for morning services. And she takes that responsibility seriously. So when the person in the last house is too sleepy to wake up because the teething baby next door cries all night, Baila the Klopper decides it’s part of her job to soothe the teething baby, even if this means delegating the actual klopping on doors to someone else.   The story has the cumulative feeling of a round as Baila enlists everybody in the shtetl in the solution to the problem. The story is charming, Baila speaks in perfectly scanning rhyme, and the illustrations beautifully convey the early morning light and the early spring ...

How to Welcome an Alien by Rebecca Klempner, illustrated by Shirley Waisman Kalaniot Books (imprint of Endless Mountains Publishing), 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Shanna Silva Buy at Bookshop.org How to Welcome an Alien is rooted in the long-standing Jewish values of hospitality and kindness. An alien spaceship crash lands in a residential neighborhood. The protagonist, Dina, welcomes the strange creatures into her home, even reminding her doubtful mother about the mitzvah of giving guests food, drink, and a place to rest. Humor leads this tale as the hosts and guests struggle to communicate and the creatures find unusual uses for the human objects. The alien vocabulary is funny-sounding, but familiar enough to be understood. A surprise ending brings the tale and lesson full-circle. The aliens are illustrated in a non-threatening way with a color scheme that matches those of their human hosts. The art reminds us that commonalities can be found even in seemingly different spe...