[COLD OPEN] There are three rivers up north, the Dan and the Snir and the Banias, that all of them merge and they form the Jordan River, which feeds the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee. These three rivers are my favorite places. Whenever I open the book and I see this, I remember all the trips I had in this very, very beautiful rivers.
[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly. I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. When I was a kid, I spent hours communing with nature, collecting shells, making mud pies, and building fairy huts out of sticks and flowers. Anyone who's ever immersed themselves like this in the natural world will definitely connect with the picture book A Feather, a Pebble, a Shell, a lovely meditation on the natural landscape of Israel, written and illustrated by Miri Leshem-Pelly. Miri's voice is calm and dreamy, and I could hear birds chirping and dogs barking in the background as she spoke. Our conversation was both fun and serious. We talked about art, nature, books, Instagram challenges, and also about the war in Israel and its impact on humans and nature. For show notes, a transcript and links to more about this book, subscribe to my newsletter at BookOfLifePodcast.substack.com or visit the full website at BookOfLifePodcast.com. [END MUSIC]
Miri Leshem-Pelly, welcome to The Book of Life.
Hi, Heidi. I'm so happy to be here.
Miri, you've published books in Hebrew in Israel and in English in the US. Other than language, is there anything else that sets those books apart? Do you write differently for those two audiences?
I think, yes. I started with Hebrew books. In recent years, I write in English. So maybe the change has to do with the years and not with the language. But my books in Hebrew, most of them are about nature in Israel. Some of them are non fiction. Some are stories about wild animals. But when I started writing in English, my first two books that were published in English were Scribble and Author - it's a book about creativity. It's a little wild and has nothing to do with nature or with non fiction or anything grounded. The next book was Penny and the Plain Piece of Paper, again, a book that is completely imaginary, about this doodled character living inside papers in this two dimensional world, and she's moving from one paper to the other, looking for her perfect home. It was really liberating, in a way, because I just felt that I'm free to reinvent myself, because in Israel, people know me already, and they recognize me as the nature expert for children. I took off to somewhere completely different, and it was fun. But after these two books, I felt that I'm missing writing about nature. I wrote Chloe's Nature Journal. It was really fun to go back to something that I love so much. Now with my newest book, I think I came a full circle, because this is a book about nature, but this time about nature in Israel, but it's in English.
That's so interesting, the way it came around full circle, as you said,.
Yes!
So your books seem to fall into two categories: books about nature and books about art. Why are these the themes that are important to you?
This has been me all my life. These were my two passions. I love art in every possible form. I loved music. I was playing the piano for many years. I was dancing, I was acting. I just did everything that has to do with self expression in a creative way. And my second passion was always nature. I especially love animals, wildlife, and hiking in nature. What I love most in the world is when I can mix the two of them, when I can draw animals or write about nature. I really feel at home when I do that, and I also love inspiring children to express themselves and to inspire them to connect with nature. I do a lot of school visits and workshops for kids. Yes, these are my two favorite topics.
Your most recent book, A Feather, a Pebble, a Shell, combines these topics. I want to dig into that some more. So can you describe what this book is about, and also, what was your inspiration for this particular book?
A Feather, a Pebble, a Shell is a book about a girl hiking in nature in Israel. In every place where she visits, she's looking for something interesting, something small that catches her eyes like a feather, a pebble, shell, something that she can hold in her hand. The book is about those little moments of connecting to nature, when you hold a little pebble and you feel it and you really investigate it, like look very carefully and discover new things about how it looks, how it feels. These are the small moments that I wanted to capture in this book, and I wanted to show the nature diversity that Israel has. And this was my starting point. You asked about my inspiration for the book, so it really started from there. I wanted to present to the world how Israel, even though it's really, really tiny, it has so many different nature conditions, landscapes, and to show how diverse Israel is.
Well, can you tell us a bit more about nature in Israel? What is unusual or unique about it.
For many years, I thought that Israel has nothing special about it. That's the truth. Because I was born into a family of nature lovers. We were hiking all the time in every possible place in Israel, and I loved it. But then when I was 10 years old, we went on the first time for a trip abroad, and we went to Europe for a whole month with a caravan. It was amazing. And my eyes opened up, like I couldn't believe it. I saw mountains that were so high and forests much, much deeper. Everything was wider and bigger. In a way, when we got back to Israel, I felt like: so, Israel is not the most. It doesn't have the highest mountains, it doesn't have the largest forests and so on. Then I found out about the Dead Sea. So Israel does have one world record, because the Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth. But I didn't think it was that, you know, attractive, like, the lowest place.
[LAUGHTER]
Until I realized that you don't find many countries around the world that have so many different nature landscapes as you can find in Israel. It's all about location. For example, if you look at climate zones around the world, you see that Israel is a meeting point of several climate zones. So within this tiny place, we have a climate zone similar to Africa, and we have a climate zone that is similar to Europe, and we have a climate zone that is similar to the Mediterranean countries, and to the Middle East, of Asia. So we have all those influences that meet in one place. And that's really cool. So I'm really excited about that, and this was something that I wanted to show in the book.
So what are some of the different kinds of landscapes? I know there's beaches, mountains... like what, what are they?
Okay, so in the north we have the Galilee area, which is green. It has high mountains and forests and rivers and lakes. Then we go a little south, and you have the beach along the Mediterranean Sea, more like flat land: fields and a lot of agriculture. And you go a little more to the south, and you start to see the desert. And it goes to more and more extreme desert conditions. It also has areas with mountains, some beautiful canyons and craters, very unusual craters. And you have, as I mentioned before, the lowest place on Earth, which creates the Dead Sea, which is a very unusual and unique nature phenomena. It's really a bizarre place. All the way to south to Eilat, the southern city Eilat has a beach to the Red Sea, which is a completely different ocean, and it has a tropical reef. It's a desert city, but it has this beautiful beach and tropical reef. So again, completely different environment.
I think there's a human instinct to collect pretty things, actually, not just a human instinct. I know crows and magpies do this. I bet other animals do this.
Right.
For instance, when I visit Sanibel Island in Florida, I end up doing what they call "the Sanibel stoop," along with everybody else there, because it's a beach full of amazing seashells. So when you see a pretty shell, you stoop over and you pick it up. It's "the Sanibel stoop." And I have a big jar of these seashells now in my home, just because they're pretty. I don't have any use for them. They're just nice to look at. So it's very interesting that your narrator purposely doesn't collect these natural items that they find, but just leaves them for other people to find. Why did you decide to have her do that?
I too, as a child, I loved collecting, but when I started to write about it, I realized that it could give a wrong idea, because nowadays it is known that it could be a problem when we pick up things that belong to nature, because everything is part of the ecosystem and everything has a role. Sometimes we are not aware to this role, but it is really best that we just leave as little as possible traces. When we visit nature, when we walk in nature, when we go on hikes or picnics or whatever, we should collect our trash, but also don't take away things that belong there. In many places, you could see signs that ask you not to take shells and pebbles and other things, and I didn't want to be confusing, that one thing, it's okay, one thing not. I decided to have it as a message in the book, that if you can leave it behind, it is best. You can just enjoy holding this nature item, appreciating it, taking a close look at it, feeling it. You can take a picture of it. You can have maybe a nature journal and draw it, but when you're done, just leave it there.
I love that answer. It's good role modeling, and it seems like a healthy approach, like very zen.
Yeah.
And the signs that you mentioned, I've seen signs like this in nature reserves here. They say, Take only photos, leave only footprints.
Yes.
It's a good philosophy. You are the illustrator of the book as well as the author. That's true for all of your books. So can you talk about the technique that you use?
I use many different techniques. There are illustrators that have one style, but it doesn't work for me. What I love to do is to look for the best style and technique for each book individually, because each book is different and requires a different look. One thing that I will say is that I almost in all my books, I work with my hands. Hand drawings, not digital. I do use the digital after I draw, I do some editing, but the majority of the work is by hand.
For this particular book, I chose to work with watercolors. Maybe you also noticed that the book itself has a very large format, because I wanted to show nature with all its beauty and to go into little details, just like the girl in the book that she loves to look into the smallest details. I wanted the reader to have the same experience. I then wanted to hide little surprises in each illustration for readers that look carefully. So that's why I really needed the large scale. And I thought that watercolor would be good because on one hand, it allows me to draw with free hand. It's fluid. It is moving as I paint with it, and the colors mix. But on the other hand, I can also go to the tiniest, tiniest details with very, very thin brushes, and with a drier brush, you can go to really the smallest details. So in watercolor, I found exactly what I was looking for in this book.
Well, it turned out beautifully. So.
Thank you.
You mentioned that there are some surprises hidden in the illustrations. Is there anything in particular we should be watching for as we read the book?
It's animals, mostly. I added animals that live in this specific area that we see in this scene. They are not in the text. They're not mentioned at all, but if you look very carefully, you can spot them. And I think it's fun for kids. If you want to find out which animal it is, I have done a free activity guide that you can download from my website, and you can see what they are called and get to know them a little more.
Excellent. Well, thank you for providing that.
You have a very lively Instagram that combines your loves of art and animals. Can you tell us about your 100 Animals project and about your How To videos?
Yes, so my 100 Animals Making Faces project, I just decided to challenge myself. 100 days. Each day I made a new drawing, a different animal, and they have facial expressions that are human expressions. So it's humorous, it's funny, but it's also very, very detailed. I drew them with colored pencils. It actually took me so much longer than I expected. I think I didn't live during these 100 days, I couldn't cook, I couldn't do anything, my whole family helped me, because it took me at least four or five, sometimes more hours to complete one painting because of all the details that I wanted to add.
I didn't know what to expect and what is going to happen with this challenge, but it took me to places that were so incredible. I recently got a call from Ravensburger. It's a company that creates puzzles a very famous brand, very quality.
Yeah, I recognize it. Jigsaw puzzles!
Yes.
Yeah.
So they loved this project, and they wanted me to create a puzzle with some of the animals. It is going to come out in the US soon. It was so exciting to work on something like that. And, you know, they came to me because of this project. And also I had an invitation to present in a solo exhibition in Israel. It was presented for a whole year, the 100 animals. So it just went to very exciting directions.
Oh, that's wonderful. I can't wait to see the puzzle.
It was the most complex illustration I have ever made, because when you create a puzzle, you have to have details in every little bit. You cannot just draw sky or some flat area, so I had to put there so many details. Wow, it was a lot of work, but fun.
And the How To videos, the how to draw. It's, again, just something fun that I decided to do, and it exploded. I started to draw animals, but to use regular things that we have around our home to trace around them and to move them around and to create, eventually, an animal. So I'm doing these videos, and people just love them so much. So that made me do more and more, and some of them became viral. My most viral one has got more than 270 million views.
Wow, mazel tov!
Insane, really. Which is "how to draw an elephant with scissors" so but yeah, I have several videos that have gone over a million views, and it is so much fun. And these days, what I started to do, which is not out yet, but I'll tell you: I decided to have a website of an online art school where I'll be teaching kids how to draw in all kind of unusual ways.
That's amazing!
Thank you.
So rather than just watching a few videos, they can actually take classes.
Exactly, because many people told me that they love these videos, but the videos are going very, very fast. You know, when you're on social media, people are impatient, and if you go beyond the 30 seconds, it is too long for people to watch. So I draw, and then when I edit, I do it like 10 times speed, so it's fun to watch. But if you want to follow the tutorial and try it out yourself, it is very difficult because it goes too fast. On my course, it is slow, and you can really learn how to do it.
Excellent. I love that idea.
So after reading your work, I'm sure that readers will want to learn more about Israel. What other children's books about Israel would you recommend?
These are some books that I would like to recommend. One is called All Eyes on Alexandra. It's by Anna Levine. Alexandra is crane migrating, passing through Israel, and we see Israel in a very different way. And I really love that concept, because Israel is really in the route for many, many, many migrating birds that are flying from Europe to Africa and the other way around.
I also love A Hoopoe says OOP by Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh. This book is about animals in Israel. Also, it's a board book for the little ones.
There's a book called Fast Asleep in a Little Village in Israel by Jennifer Tzivia MacLeod. Has all kinds of sounds typical to Israel, and a lady that is trying to sleep, but all those sounds are annoying her, and you learn about Israel in a very funny way.
I also love My Israel and Me by Alice McGinty, it's about the people that live in Israel and about the diversity. I'm sure many people are not aware of how many different ethnicities and religion and all the diversity that Israel has.
Good recommendations. Thank you.
Thank you.
At the time of recording, the cycle of violence with Hamas and Hezbollah continues. Hostages are still in captivity. Israel remains at war. If you don't mind sharing, what has your experience of this war been like, and how has it affected your writing and your art?
Wow, yes. Since October 7, my life has changed, and all the life of everybody living in Israel, and we're still inside this state of trauma, it is constantly in my mind. I cannot stop thinking about it for one second. It is just really, really difficult. And of course, as an artist, it is very hard to concentrate and to create something. So when the war started, schools were closed at first. And I do a lot of school visits. I do, like, between 100, 200 school visits every year.
Wow. That's a lot.
Yes, it is. It's like my main job. When schools were back, there is a city called Sderot. Sderot is a city that is very, very close to the border with Gaza, and it was heavily affected during October 7 and a lot of Hamas terrorists entered the city and killed many people, and the city was evacuated. And after, I don't know if it was six months or a little more, the government told the people that they can go back home, that it's safe now, and they can return. Not all of them, of course, returned, but many of them returned. And then schools opened in Sderot, and a school contacted me and asked me to come and do school visits.
I was really excited. I was so happy that I can do something good for these kids. So I went there. It's a very long drive from where I live. I arrived at the school, and I just parked the car, and suddenly, before I went out of the car, sirens started. And I realized that even though everybody thought that the city was safe, it is attacked again with rockets. I was so shocked and so scared, I didn't know what to do. I knew what the instructions are and what I'm supposed to do when I hear the sirens and the first thing they always tell you is, leave the car. Get out of the car, because the car could become like death trap. It's the worst place to be, and I knew that, but I felt as if the car is protecting me. To leave the car seemed so illogical, and there was no shelter around. I looked, the school was like, maybe a minute walk away, but I knew I don't have that time. I didn't know what to do, you know, and where I live in Hadera, if we hear a siren, we have a minute and a half to go to a shelter. But in Sderot, you're so close to Gaza that you have only five seconds. So between the time I heard the sirens and all the thoughts that were running in my head, like, what should I do? What should I do? I just didn't do anything. And then I heard a very big explosion. It shook the car. It was so scary. Later, I found out that it was a direct hit in one of the houses in Sderot. Luckily, people were not at home.
I went to the school and I saw the children there. It was so terrible. It was so sad, because so many children, they were sitting in the shelter but they were so traumatized, because for so many of them, it just woke up all the traumas. They were crying. It was so terrible at first. You know, I asked the principal, do you want me to do the school visit? She said, I can't speak, I don't know, I don't know, if you want to go, if you want to stay. So you know, she was not in a state she could talk to me. I decided to stay. And I waited for an hour or two, and then when they went back to classes, they asked me to come, and I did the program, and I just saw how it calms the children down. You must know that, that this is the magic of stories. It was really magical. I just saw how stressed they were, and then when they just entering the story and they were calming down and relaxing, it was so beautiful to see. I felt that I was privileged to give them that moment on that day.
Wow, just the highs and the lows of that story. Whew. I don't even know what to say.
It feels so small, so like insignificant. But yes, that was my personal experience.
Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you for listening.
So you do a lot of school visits, obviously, in person. Do you do virtual school visits as well?
Yes, I do them for schools in the US. I do a virtual visit. During the war I also did virtual visits, just like I did in the COVID time. I love doing that, also. It's not the same, but it is a lot of fun, because I can bring them to my house to see the studio, to see where I'm working. I'm showing them things I'm working on. So it's a lot of fun too.
Is there an interview question that you never get asked that you would like to answer?
I'd like to talk a little bit about my childhood and how it is connected to what I'm doing today. As I said before, I grew up in a family of nature lovers, hiking and appreciating the birds and the flowers. My father always knew exactly what is the time for each flower to bloom, and we would go there to see this flower. My mother always knew the names of every flower, every tree. She was a teacher, and among other things, she was a nature teacher. She knew all those things. This has influenced me very deeply. Also my art love came from my family, because we were also going a lot to see museums and to draw together. I absorb a lot of both my passions right from my childhood. I think it is so important for parents to open their children, to appreciate things around them, to appreciate nature and art and other things that they love, because there are things that you get as a child that really influences all your life that you cannot do that when you're an adult. It's not at the same level. I think also the love for books. My mother told me that when she chose books for me as a child, she always looked at the illustrations. It was very important for her to have books with beautiful illustrations. Picture books really are the first art that children experience, both in literature and in visual arts. So it's so important to give that to our children.
Yeah, obviously, I'm a book lover from an early age, and I do remember that the illustrations were something that I would sort of dive into and pore over, and sometimes I would even get tracing paper and trace my favorite illustrations, just as a way to sort of live with them more deeply.
Right.
So, yeah. What are you working on next?
Two projects. One is a book that is connected to what we talked about on my Instagram, how to draw. So I'm also developing a book that will teach children to use the household items to draw. The second project is something really challenging that I've never done before. I took my 100 Animals project, and I'm trying to make it into a book. So I'm trying to write for the illustrations. Usually I write first and then I illustrate. I think most books are like that. But this time, I'm trying to do it the other way around, and it's very difficult, but I think I'm getting there.
All right, good. We'll look forward to that. Is there anything else that you want to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you?
I thought maybe I could read something from the book.
That would be great!
So I want to read the part where the girl is going to the Red Sea, to the tropical reef. There is a story behind that, even though in the book, it is the last place she visits, because I organized all the locations from north to south, and this is Eilat in the south, but it actually was the first part of the book that I wrote.
It was based on a childhood memory. I was about 10 years old, and we were in Eilat and we were snorkeling over the coral reef. It was so beautiful, so amazing. And then I noticed that I have water coming into my goggles, so I raised my head just to empty them, and that second was like, whoa. It was overwhelming, because by just raising my head, I am transporting myself into a different world. When my head was in the water, I saw the beauty of the coral reef and the blue water, and I didn't hear any sound, except for my own breath. Even the temperature was cool when you're in the water. When I raised my head, you know, it's a desert. I feel the heat of the sun and hear all the sounds of the boats and the people and the waves and everything was so different that what I ended up doing for the next few minutes, I just entered my head into the water, and raised up, and again, and again, just feeling this strange feeling of everything is different, and that inspired this part of the book.
[READING ALOUD] "I snorkel in the blue, blue world of the Red Sea, where the only sound is my breath. Fish play hide and seek in their coral garden. I raise my head above the water to a world of loud sound, dazzling light and desert heat while my feet dangle over the calm coral reef."
I love knowing the backstory. It brings it to life so much.
Thank you.
Are there other backstories that you can share about other scenes?
A lot of them were connected to personal moments. For example, Ein Avdat is a canyon in the desert. I visited there with my children, and we saw the vultures nesting there. It was so exciting. I took a lot of pictures that day, and one of the pictures was my son. He was running around and jumping over a big rock and just balancing himself with his hands spread to the side like a bird. When I was working on the Ein Avdat part, I was looking at those pictures, and when I saw this picture of my son with his arms like that, and with this very dynamic picture, I imagined what ended up being the illustration for this page, with the girl running with a feather of a vulture that she found. I thought, if you're running like that with your arms to the sides and you're holding this giant feather, you must feel the resistance of the feather to the air, and feel like you are flying too. And that inspired the scene that I wrote for Ein Avdat. And later, when we started working on the cover, the editor said, this is her favorite picture from the book. She loved this illustration. But in the illustration, we see the girl running with her back to us, so she said, Can you draw it, but facing us? This is the cover of the book. They all evolved from this experience and this photo. So you never know where the inspiration is going to come from.
Within the book, the girl visits many different landscapes and environments. Is there one of those that's your personal favorite to spend time in?
Yes, but it actually makes me sad to think about it now. The first place in the book is up north. It's a river. It's called the Dan River. There are three rivers up north, the Dan and Snir and the Banias, that all of them merge and they form the Jordan River, which feeds the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee. These three rivers are my favorite places. I don't remember a year that I didn't visit at least one of them, except for this year, this area is now out of reach. It is a closed area. You cannot get that far north because it is constantly attacked. So these nature reserves that I love so much, I cannot go there, and I don't know when I will visit there. It makes me really sad. Whenever I open the book and I see this, I remember all the trips I had in these very, very beautiful rivers. It is so sad. I don't know what is their state now, because all those rockets caused a lot of fires, and a lot of beautiful nature sites are destroyed.
[SIGH] Yes, actually, you know, on October 7, I was in the Snir River, hiking there in the morning, before we knew, and then we heard the news. The Snir River is a river that is nature reservation that I am collaborating a lot with. They have there so many of my illustrations all over the place, in signs and in the brochure, and I work with them a lot. So I met the manager of the national park on that day, and he told me and my husband, Go! Go fast. It is going to come to the north very soon, and just head home immediately. So we stopped the hike and we drove home, and I never visited there since.
Wow. That's something I hadn't really thought about, of how it's affecting the wildlife to be in a war zone.
Yes.
It's interesting, when a disaster for humans happens sometimes it benefits the wildlife, like during COVID, when everybody stayed home, the wildlife had the outdoors to themselves, and it was kind of a good thing for them. But then when there's a human catastrophe that's a war with rockets and fires and so on, that's certainly not going to benefit the wildlife.
Exactly.
Is there any scientific tracking of how it affects the wildlife? Or people are too busy worrying about preserving human life?
That, and also you cannot go there. You cannot even monitor. It's just completely closed, so we don't know what is going on there. I hope it will recover. I hope WE will recover too one day.
Yeah. I hope soon.
It's Tikkun Olam time. What action would you like to call listeners to take to help heal the world?
I wanted to highlight an organization that I'm involved in, in Israel, but it also has a branch in the US. It is SPNI, Society for Protection of Nature in Israel. In the US, they have a website, NatureIsrael.org. They do such beautiful projects, not just to help nature, also a lot of beautiful projects that help people. I am, in Israel, a part of the council of this organization. Supporting them could be very, very meaningful and helpful. If you would like to check it out.
All right, thank you. Where can listeners learn more about your work?
My website, MiriLeshemBooks.com. In my website, you can see my books, and also you have the free downloads place where you can find resources that are free for all of my books, including the new one. It has, as I said, the activity guide. It also has a free download of coloring pages from the book, and with all those little details, I think it's really fun to color them. On my Instagram I am Miri_Leshem_Pelly. So check it out.
All right. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. It's a wonderful book, and I thank you for spending so much time talking with me.
Thank you, Heidi, so much for listening, and I really appreciate your podcast.
Oh, thank you very much.
[MUSIC, DEDICATION] Hi. This is Terry LaBan, author of Mendel the Mess Up, a new graphic novel. I'll be joining you soon on The Book of Life podcast, and I'd like to dedicate my episode to my wife, Patty, my daughter Dalia, my son Eli, and to all the folks who helped get this in print, my old friend, James Marks, Bruce Black, Catriella, Freedman at PJ Library, and my agent, Dennis Kitchen.
Like the Academy Awards!
I don't leave anybody out! I forgot to put dedications in the book, so I feel kind of bad about that.
[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473, or bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com. Subscribe to my newsletter on Substack to join me in growing Jewish joy and shrinking antisemitic hate. Get show notes, transcripts, Jewish kidlit news, and occasional calls to action right in your inbox. Sign up for the newsletter at BookOfLifePodcast.substack.com. You can also find The Book of Life on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Want to read the books featured on the show? Buy them through bookshop.org/shop/bookoflife to support the podcast and independent bookstores at the same time. You can also help us out by becoming a monthly supporter through Patreon or making a one time donation to our home library, the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel of Boca Raton, Florida. You'll find links for all of that and more at BookOfLifePodcast.com. Additional support comes from the Association of Jewish Libraries, the leading authority on Judaic librarianship, which also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. Learn more about AJL at JewishLibraries.org. Our background music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening and happy reading. [END MUSIC]
