The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Zoe Rosenthal Is Not Lawful Good  by Nancy Werlin Candlewick (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Heidi Rabinowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Zoe Rosenthal treats herself to a secret visit to Dragon Con to indulge her fandom of (fictional) feminist sci fi TV series Bleeders... secret because her earnest social justice warrior boyfriend would see it as a frivolous waste of time. But Zoe bonds with others who share her passion, and finds her true self as she works with her new friends to save their favorite show from cancellation. As author Nancy Werlin says on Vimeo, it's not so much about what could go wrong as what could go right. Coverage of Zoe's Jewish identity is minimal yet relevant. Personal and cultural encounters with antisemitism, briefly alluded to, generate in her a determination to do good in the world. "I'm Jewish. I understand what happens in the long term if you don't fight back against hate" (page 207). Unexpectedly, she...

 The Donkey and the Garden by Devorah Busheri, illustrated by Menahem Halberstadt Green Bean Books Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org This picture book biography of Rabbi Akiva is not a whole-life portrait; it does not follow Akiva from childhood to adolescence and adulthood until he becomes one of Judaism’s greatest scholars, sages, and tannaim. Slightly more tightly focused than Jacqueline Jules' Drop by Drop , it begins in his adulthood, when he is a forty year old, illiterate shepherd. Akiva’s wife, Rachel, is truly the heroine of this story, for she is the one who encourages Akiva to learn to read and write. Akiva wants to, he yearns to, but worries he will never fit in with the children and that people will laugh at him. Instead of pushing him, Rachel plants a garden on a donkey’s back and insists Akiva come to the market with her. The first day, people point at the donkey and laugh. The second day, people still point and laugh. But on the third...

 Nathan's Song by Leda Schubert, illustrated by Maya Ish-Shalom Dial Books for Young Readers (imprint of Penguin Young Readers) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Ruth Horowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Nathan’s Song is a charming, well-told tale about creative drive, family love, immigrant pluck, and the benevolence of good luck. Growing up in a Russian shtetl, Nathan loves to sing, and longs to study opera. His family scrimps and saves, and when Nathan is sixteen, they send him to Italy to pursue his ambition, vowing to join him when he’s famous. When Nathan accidentally boards a ship bound for New York, it seems that all is lost. But Nathan sings on the boat to earn his passage, sings on the streets to make a start in New York, where he finds a music teacher, a singing career and a wife. His dreams are not complete, however, until he is able to send for his family and greet them on Ellis Island with a celebration of song. Maya Ish-Shalom’s folkloric illustrations are blocky and brig...

Try It! How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat  by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by Giselle Potter Beach Lane Books (imprint of Simon & Schuster) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org Moving quickly from bookkeeper at LA’s Seventh Street produce market in the mid-1950s to sales (the only woman among a workforce of men) Frieda Caplan “loved people” and “She loved to talk.” Frieda also loved to try new things, especially fruits and vegetables other than apples, bananas, and potatoes. Frieda’s instincts and “a funny feeling in her elbows” told her when she’d found something other people would grow to love too. With packaging and recipes she encouraged people to try new things, like mushrooms, while the other salesmen all said, “No!” It was not long before Frieda owned her own produce company and sold unusual fruits and vegetables: black radishes, baby corn, kiwi fruit, jicama, and quince. If you see produce in the grocery you’ve never seen before, chance...

 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...

Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued  by Peter Sís Norton Young Readers (imprint of WW Norton and Company) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org In December 1938, Nicholas Winton, an English stockbroker, visited a friend in Prague to help hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly Jewish, who escaped the Nazi invasion of Sudetenland. Knowing that war was coming, time was running out, and something needed to be done, Nicky got started. England would give unaccompanied minors temporary admission, so working out of his hotel room, Nicky worked with desperate parents to arrange safe passage for their children. Returning to England, Nicky continued to work: finding foster families, applying for visas, and making travel arrangements. “Eight trains left Prague in the spring and summer of 1939.” A ninth train carrying 250 more children was stopped at the border on September 1, the day Germany attacked Poland. Nicky lived a g...

Who Was Levi Strauss? by Ellen Labrecque Penguin Workshop (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Ellen Labrecque’s Who Was Levi Strauss? is a new title in the extensive WHO HQ series. The book is a cradle-to-grave biography of 19th century immigrant entrepreneur Loeb Strauss, who would later change his name to Levi Strauss and build the blue jeans empire that still dominates the fashion industry today. Labrecque’s book follows the formula of the series, laying out Strauss’s humble beginnings in Bavaria as the youngest child of door-to-door sewing supply salesman Hirsch Strauss and his second wife, Rebecca. A few years after two of the Strauss brothers immigrate to America and open a successful sewing supply store in New York City, Loeb, along with his mother and other siblings, follows. Labrecque does not shy away from explaining the Strauss family’s reason for wanting to leave Bavaria. Life for Jews in the German state a...