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

Becoming Brianna by Terri Libenson Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Becoming Brianna is the fourth book in author/illustrator Terri Libenson’s Emmie & Friends series and the first book of the series to focus solely on a Jewish main character. The book opens with a prologue: 13-year-old Brianna nervously steps out from behind a curtain for some kind of performance. She’s so anxious, in fact, that she imagines herself tied to railroad tracks as a train approaches. Brianna’s bat mitzvah ceremony is about to begin. From there, narrator Brianna moves eight months back in time and chronicles her harrowing friendship struggles, overwhelming bat mitzvah preparations, and bickering divorced parents, all leading up to that moment behind the curtain. Interspersed with these chapters are scenes from the bat mitzvah day itself, told through comic-like illustrations of Brianna panicking about forgetting her Hebrew and screwing up her speech. Not quite a graphic novel,