The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Always Anthony written and illustrated by Terri Libenson Balzer + Bray (imprint of HarperCollins), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Always Anthony is the newest addition to author/illustrator Terri Libenson’s "Emmie & Friends" series. As with the other books in the series, Libenson zeroes in on a particular aspect of adolescence that many children deal with and offers ways to handle these difficulties through the storyline. In Always Anthony , popular, athletic Anthony Randall is a whiz at science, but he struggles in language arts class. His teacher asks his classmate Leah Ruben to tutor him until he brings his grade up. Leah is reluctant to work with Anthony, as he is “TPFW” (Too Popular for Words), and she has been bullied by the popular kids in the past. As Anthony and Leah get to know one another, he shows her that you shouldn’t judge someone too hastily based on their friends, while she shows him the damage that being a bull...

Space Torah: Astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman’s Cosmic Mitzvah by Rachelle Burk, illustrated by Craig Orback Intergalactic Afikomen, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Space Torah tells the story of astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, who flew into space five times between 1985 and 1996. In its opening pages, this beautiful picture book brings readers back to Hoffman’s childhood and adolescence, when his dreams of going into space begin in earnest. When he is finally able to join a space mission, he feels profound peace and gratitude in the vastness of the cosmos and thinks about God being up there with him. He even brings Jewish items with him on his missions- a siddur, a dreidel, a mezuzah. On his flight on the space shuttle Columbia, he brings a miniature Torah scroll and as he floats in zero gravity, he performs the mitzvah of reading from the Torah. Space Torah ’s strength comes from the way it shows the deep connection that Hoffman feels between himself a...

The Inside Name by Randi Sonenshine, illustrated by Gina Capaldi Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House), 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org The target audience for Randi Sonenshine’s lovely new book The Inside Name is young middle graders, but this 44-page hardcover reads more like a sophisticated picture book. The first-person narrative tells the story of a young boy in 15th century Lisbon named Felipe Alonso. At least, that is his outside name. He and his family are conversos, Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism during the Inquisition. The family practices Judaism in secret, so their Jewish names, their inside names, are never spoken outside of their home. On his way to and from an errand for his mother, Felipe is called horrible names by the city’s knife grinder and is chased by boys intent on terrorizing him. Sonenshine shows what can become of Jews in Portugal at this time as Felipe recalls his friendship with Solomo...

She's a Mensch! Jewish Women Who Rocked the World by Rachelle Burk and Alana Barouch, illustrated by Arielle Trenk Intergalactic Afikomen, 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Intergalactic Afikomen In this collection of short biographical sketches, authors Rachelle Burk and Alana Barouch (a mother and daughter team) tell readers about twenty Jewish women of extraordinary achievement. Yes, the book includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a few other well-known luminaries, but She’s a Mensch also offers readers a glimpse into the lives of women whose stories are not often told. Some of the stars of the book are people readers have probably never even heard of, such as Australian mountaineers Cheryl and Nikki Bart, a mother-daughter team who climbed the highest peaks of all seven continents. Activist April N. Baskin and scientist Nalini Nadkarni are examples of Jews of color discussed. Each of the nineteen, two-page spreads includes a four-line poem, a paragraph of ...

A Sky Full of Song by Susan Lynn Meyer Union Square Kids, 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org The pitch for Susan Lynn Meyer’s A Sky Full of Song writes itself: Little House on the Prairie , but Jewish! This exceptional book gives readers the story of a family of Russian immigrants settling in North Dakota at the beginning of the 20th century. It’s 1905, and eleven-year-old Shoshana, along with and her mother and sisters, joins her father and older brother who have already started a new life on the vast American Plains. Meyer fills Shoshana’s story with powerful descriptions of the lush landscape and the harsh, day-to-day life on the prairie. Shoshana finds the land beautiful and exciting, if a bit mysterious, while her dear older sister Libke has difficulty adjusting. Their American classmates at their one-room schoolhouse express ignorant ideas about Jews, and the girls face physical danger at the hands of the school bullies. Should they turn aw...

Where You've Got to Be by Caroline Gertler Greenwillow Books, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Nolie has always felt like she lives in the shadow of her accomplished older sister Linden. Though Linden is just 12 years old, she’s ambitious and well on her way to becoming a star ballerina (and a really moody pre-teen). Eleven-year-old Nolie, on the other hand, feels adrift as she hasn’t yet discovered anything she’s passionate about, and her busy parents fuss over Linden all the time. Adding to her worries is Nolie’s best friend Jessa, who wants to be “cool” in sixth grade and seems willing to leave Nolie behind to do so. Caroline Gertler’s second novel, Where You’ve Got to Be , is a compassionate story about adolescence, identity, and the bonds that both heal us and challenge us. Nolie, in her quest to have something of her own, steals items from friends and family members. She knows what she’s doing is wrong, but she is desperate to find som...

Monster Bar Mitzvah by Josh Anderson, illustrated by Dustin Evans Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House), 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Josh Anderson’s slim graphic novel, Monster Bar Mitzvah , presents the story of Eli, one of those kids who can’t seems to get out of his own way. It’s summertime, and Eli is feeling lonely and bored because his older brother Adam is so busy preparing for his bar mitzvah. Every time one of his parents gives Eli a task to help around the house, he gets distracted and messes things up, whether it’s putting together a table, sorting response cards, or simply getting a bag of flour down from a high shelf. Feeling sorry for himself, Eli retreats to his room where he meets one of his stuffed animals come-to-life, a friendly monster named Brisket. Brisket is out to prove to Eli that his summer can still be fun. The story is light on explanations– readers never find out how Brisket becomes animate or why ...

The Prince of Steel Pier by Stacy Nockowitz Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jacqueline Jules Buy at Bookshop.org Thirteen-year-old Joey Goodman spends every August in Atlantic City. His grandparents and Uncle Sol own the St. Bonaventure, an aging hotel on the Boardwalk which caters to elderly Jews. Every summer, at least one hotel guest passes away. And that is how The Prince of Steel Pier begins, with a line guaranteed to grab attention: “It’s nine o’clock on Friday morning and Mrs. Goldberg is definitely dead.” After seeing Mrs. Goldberg, Joey vomits and the rest of the family comments on his sensitive nature. Joey is tired of being called “squirt” by his two older brothers. He wants to prove himself as being brave and capable. But when he accidentally gets involved with Atlantic City mobsters, he finds that the support of family is exactly what he needs. This novel, which takes place in the 1970’s, just as the casinos w...

We Worship Here: Jewish Synagogue by Angela Wood, illustrated by Emma Trithart Franklin Watts, 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz We Worship Here: Jewish Synagogue is a title in the We Worship Here series from Franklin Watts. It’s an odd little book. Coming in at 32 pages, it seems like a picture book meant for a very young audience, but the index in the back is not common in picture books. Perhaps it’s an easy reader, but much of the vocabulary and ideas in the book are on the sophisticated side for an early reader. I certainly wouldn’t call it a middle grade book. So, I’m not sure who the audience is for We Worship Here: Jewish Synagogue .    There is no indication that the building on the cover is a synagogue, other than a person in a tallit waving from the sidewalk in front of the building. It could just as easily be a mosque or Greek Orthodox church. Each spread addresses a different aspect of Jewish life in a synagogue, from the Ner Tamid to how Jews...

Albert Einstein by Button Books Button Books (Great Lives in Graphics series), 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Great Lives in Graphics: Albert Einstein is a patchwork quilt of a book: its 32 pages attempt to cover many details of Einstein’s life, from his mother’s alarm at the size of his head when he was born to the weight of his brain upon autopsy. But the book also discusses an assortment of topics related to Einstein by only the thinnest thread, such as how a compass works and Plato’s “big ideas.” Each page is filled from corner to corner with colorful text, drawings, graphics, and charts of every shape and size. It’s possible that a middle grade reader would find this layout appealing in that it makes for an easy read– short snippets of facts and explanations displayed in a variety of fonts and connected images that mimic how kids absorb information today. It’s also possible that the book tries to squeeze so much onto the pages that a rea...

Ellen Outside the Lines by A.J. Sass Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz  Buy at Bookshop.org As A.J. Sass’s new middle grade novel, opens, Ellen Katz is getting ready to go on a huge adventure: a special school trip to Barcelona with a class of students studying Spanish. Joining her on the trip are her abba, who is one of the parent chaperones, her best friend Laurel, and an assortment of other students, including a new, nonbinary student named Isa. When everyone arrives in Spain, the kids are split into small groups to complete a series of tasks throughout the week, and Ellen finds herself in a group without Laurel but with Isa and a couple of boys she doesn’t know well. As the week goes on, Ellen must navigate the twists and turns of middle school friendships while dealing with the sights and sounds of a totally new environment. All of it can be overwhelming for Ellen, who is autistic. She is also just beginning to discov...

The Unfinished Corner by Dani Colman, illustrated by Rachel Petrovicz Wonderbound Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Five days before her bat mitzvah, Miriam boards a bus with her friends Avi and David -- and her frenemy Judith -- bound for Washington, D.C. But the rabbi driving the bus has other plans for the kids. Instead of taking them on their “tikkun olam” outreach trip, Rabbi Yehudi (the cleverly disguised angel Ma’alchiel of the Ishim) brings the kids to a mysterious desert-like realm and charges them with the task of flushing out all the world’s evil beings and creatures. No problem, right? Thus begins a journey for the four children to find the unfinished corner of the universe, a small area that Hashem left unfinished when the world was created. The only way that Miriam and her friends can carry out the angel’s directive is to “finish” the unfinished corner. This is the unique premise of Dani Colman’s graphic novel The Unfinished Corner . Mir...

The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain written and illustrated by Eugene Yelchin Candlewick Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Set in Cold War Russia, Eugene Yelchin’s The Genius Under the Table offers middle grade readers a darkly humorous look into Yelchin’s experience growing up in the USSR during the Cold War. Yelchin wrote and illustrated this delightful graphic memoir, in which a young Yevgeny Yelchin and his family go through the pains and perils of living under a communist regime. The family- Yevgeny and his older brother Victor, their parents, and Yevgeny’s grandmother- all sleep in one room in their apartment bloc. They are not-very-secretly watched by their neighbor, Blinov, who spies on everyone for the KGB. Life is especially difficult for the Yelchins because as Jews, they are a constant target of blatant and subversive antisemitism. But Yevgeny’s main concern is finding his special talent. His older bro...

RBG's Brave and Brilliant Women by Nadine Epstein, illustrated by Bee Johnson Delacorte Press (Penguin Random House) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Nadine Epstein’s RBG’s Brave and Brilliant Women takes full advantage of its association with the iconic Supreme Court justice named in its title. Ruth Bader Ginsburg not only wrote the introduction for this book– in the year of her death, no less– but she also played a large role in selecting the women whose biographies Epstein highlights. Justice Ginsburg’s introduction is short but excellent. She discusses two of her personal heroines, Emma Lazarus and Henrietta Szold, and she inspires readers to seek out role models of their own. The Jewish women profiled in RBG’s Brave and Brilliant Women run the gamut from familiar (Anne Frank, Judy Resnik) to more obscure (Glükel of Hameln). Young readers, though, may only recognize the names of a few of the thirty-three women. The short biograph...

The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History: The Story of the Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel Scholastic Focus Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Edsel tells the story of eleven indefatigable heroes who risked (and sometimes lost) their lives on a quest to recover Europe’s greatest artistic and cultural treasures stolen by the Nazis during World War II. The Monuments Men – a misnomer, as some of them were women – were carefully selected to act as art detectives across Europe, identifying, locating, recovering, and safeguarding tens of thousands of paintings, sculptures, pieces of furniture, monuments, and other works both large and small. Edsel’s book has all the elements of a great adventure story baked in from page one: a race against time across war-torn lands, brave heroes and vile villains, high stakes, and nail-biting tension. Any reader who devotes the considerable time required to dig into The Greatest Treasure Hunt in History will be rewarded with...

"Nice" Jewish Girls by Julie Merberg, illustrated by Georgia Rucker Downtown Bookworks (imprint of Simon & Schuster) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org One of the last pages in Julie Merberg’s wonderful new book Nice Jewish Girls is titled Jewish Geography. Though I found each one of the book’s thirty-six biographical sketches fascinating, the Jewish Geography page is the one to pore over. “It’s a small Jewish world” Merberg writes, and through thumbnail drawings and dotted lines, she shows the reader how many of the women featured in the book are linked to one another. Barbra Streisand held a fundraiser for Bella Abzug when she first ran for office. Ruth Westheimer and Gloria Steinem appeared on The Joan Rivers Show. Are these critically important facts and events? Do we need to know that Diane Von Furstenberg mentored Anne Wojcicki? No. But it sure is fun to play Jewish Geography with all of these inspirational Jewish women and admire ...

 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 ...

 The Good War by Todd Strasser Delacorte Press (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org In 1981, Todd Strasser wrote The Wave , based on the true story of high school history teacher Ben Ross and the class experiment he carried out in 1969. By creating a stringent behavioral “system” in his classroom, Ross showed his students how easily people could be swept up in a movement like Nazism. Now, forty years later, Strasser has written an updated, middle school version of The Wave titled The Good War. Instead of a high school history class, The Good War takes place in the newly formed eSports club of a middle school. The students in the club represent a wide swath of middle school types: the goody-goody, the high achiever, the hulking athlete, the “weird” loner, the bully, the mean girls, and so on. The kids come together after school to play a video game called The Good War , a World War II simulation game that pits the ...