[COLD OPEN] It's time to place your vote. So Round One voting is January 4 through 8, 2021. Round Two will be taking place, January 11 through 15th. And the Sydney Taylor Shmooze winner will be announced on Thursday January 21.
[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly. I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. The Sydney Taylor Shmooze is a mock award blog that I run with my friends Susan Kusel and Chava Pinchuck. Today those friends join me to explain what this project is, why we are doing it, and how you can help us celebrate your favorite Jewish children's books. We also get some advice from fellow mock award bloggers at Calling Caldecott, Heavy Medal, and Guessing Geisel. I'll be posting a bonus episode where you can hear my full conversation with these guests. Now, let's learn about the Sydney Taylor Shmooze.
I have with me today Susan Kusel and Chava Pinchuck, two of my good friends, fellow librarians, both of whom, like me, have been in the past the chair of the SydneyTaylor Book Award committee, and now we are all co-admins of the Sydney Taylor Shmooze. Chava, just give everybody a refresher; I'm sure many of the listeners are familiar with it but for those who may not be, tell us about the Sydney Taylor Book Award.
The Sydney Taylor Book Award is the award given by the Association of Jewish Libraries for excellence in Jewish children's literature. It's named after Sydney Taylor, author of the All-of-a-Kind Family series and some other excellent Jewish books. The award is given in three categories: in picture books, middle grade books, and young adult or teen books. The award started in 1967. I don't think they named it after Sydney Taylor till like in the 70s. And I think Rita Frischer was the one who made the connection between Ralph Taylor, Sydney Taylor's widower, and AJL, and now her daughter, Jo Taylor Marshall, funds the award every year. There is often a Body of Work Award presented to an author who has written a lot of excellent Jewish children's books.
And there's also, just so people know, there is a Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award for an unpublished middle grade work of Jewish content and that's a whole separate award but it shares the name because it was also inspired by the work of Sydney Taylor, whose manuscript was sent into a contest, it was Follett was running a contest, and her husband snuck the manuscript out of her underwear drawer and sent it in and she won. So, in honor of that exciting beginning there's also this manuscript award.
A couple years ago on the 50th anniversary I was telling people from Follett the underwear drawer story, and they were absolutely fascinated by it. It was a lot of fun to tell them about something that had happened in their company's history.
Susan, this was your idea. Just think back many months ago, when you said we should have a mock award blog. You had to tell me, what's a mock award blog. So Susan what is a mock award blog anyway? We don't want to mock these books, we don't want to make fun of them. Why do we call it a mock award blog?
Well, we definitely don't want to make fun of them; actually we want to do the opposite. We want to celebrate them, we want to guess which books are going to win the big awards. So, there's so many wonderful mock award blogs such as Calling Caldecott and Heavy Medal and Guessing Geisel, and these blogs try to figure out what's going to win the next award. And I love reading this commentary and so many different reviewers, talking about different aspects of the book. It's about as close as you can come to actually being on the committees.
Let's talk about the value of a mock award blog. You know, we already have a real award and that helps people identify the best Jewish children's literature, each year. Why is it useful to guess what's going to win?
Well, it makes you think about the award, and the eligible books. It puts the books out there in front of the public, and you analyze them in a different way. You really think about the criteria of the award, and you think about what does it take to win that. And it's so fun to read these blogs and it's really so amazing that there's now one devoted to Jewish children's literature.
Now that I'm not on the committee, I don't see all that, I don't see most of the Jewish children's books that are published during the year. Right now I'm reading Sweep, which means I'm catching up on back years because I heard of the book once the award was announced. So, by reading The Shmooze you get a good idea of what's out there and what people think of it.
Can I just say that I was Chair when Sweep won and that was an awfully fun phone call to make.
Yeah, I interviewed Jonathan Auxier about Sweep, and he's a lot of fun to talk to. So, it's a good point, what Chava just said, The Sydney Taylor Book Award is announced every January so you have to wait until January to find out what are the best books, officially of the year, but by reading The Shmooze as the year progresses, you're finding out without having that wait, you don't have to have that delayed gratification.
Heidi, can we talk about why the awards are announced every January?
Yes, please do.
This is really just so exciting to me and I was lucky enough to have this happen while I was Chair. The Youth Media Awards at the American Library Association, the giant press event, in a regular year there's about 1000 librarians and so many other people in the room, and they announce the Newbery and the Caldecott; there's about 20 awards they announce. It's the most fun I have every year, I look forward to this event. I love it. There's nothing like finding out who won with 1000 of your best friends. And they stream this, and you can catch it online, of course, but it's not the same as being there. And a couple years ago, they started announcing three additional affiliates of ALA, the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, APALA, and AILA, which is the American Indian Library Association, and the Association of Jewish Libraries and the Sydney Taylor Book Awards. So this year, 2021 will be the third year announced; it will not be in person, but it will still be amazing and exciting, and we are just so grateful to be included, every year.
Let's talk a little bit about what the Sydney Taylor Shmooze actually is. So if you go to SydneyTaylorShmooze.com, you will see this blog that we created in the spring of 2020. Volunteer reviewers evaluate all these different Jewish titles that are coming out from picture books through YA, and they look at the Sydney Taylor real award criteria as they're evaluating these books. We have a wonderful team of volunteer reviewers, to whom we are immensely grateful. And we are always looking for additional reviewers. So, if you are interested in writing reviews for The Shmooze, please go and apply again at SydneyTaylorShmooze.com you will find a form that you can fill out to sign up and become a reviewer. Chava, do you want to explain what, what's the job, what are they in for?
So a reviewer has to get the book, borrow it from the library, find it online or hopefully frequent your independent bookstore and get a copy, and read the book and review it, and in submitting their review they have to discuss the literary quality of the book, and whether or not it meets the criteria, and they should think about whether this book is a contender for being a winner, an honor book or a notable book in terms of Sydney Taylor Awards.
I'll also say that we do sometimes receive PDF review copies from publishers which then in that case we can pass it on to our reviewers, so they don't always have to obtain it for themselves, but we don't officially receive review copies across the board, the way the real award committee does. Now Sydney Taylor committee members have to review over 100 books in a year...
Yeah, well over, 100, 150.
Yeah. Someone who reviews for The Sydney Taylor Shmooze can let us know what their availability is and we usually ask people to review between one and five books through the course of a year, if somebody is really eager to review even more books, that's fine, but we do not put people to the kind of task that you would expect on the actual committee.
We also ask for your preferences, what kind of books you'd like to review how many books you'd like to review, right, whether you would rather read picture books middle grade or YA.
So there's more flexibility because you don't have to look at everything the way the real committee members do.
Although we would like to point out that there are a couple of slots every year that do come available on the actual committee so if you find that you really do enjoy reading for The Shmooze, we'd love for you to take a shot at applying for the real committee.
That's right. And The Shmooze is actually a good training ground if you have aspirations of joining the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee or other book award committees, then this is great practice for evaluating a book and expressing your thoughts in a way that makes sense to others, that might convince them of your opinion of that book. Alright, so you've been hearing all about the Sydney Taylor Shmooze and all of these reviews. And now it's time to place your vote. So Round One of voting is January 4 through 8th, 2021. Round Two will be taking place the following week, January, 11 through 15th. And the winner will be announced on Thursday January 21. So to have your voice heard and get your vote in all you need to do is go to SydneyTaylorShmooze.com, where you will find a ballot. Round One you'll find a ballot with every title that we've reviewed during the year. And we will also have a blog post in which we'll link to every review, so that you can quickly refer back and get a refresher about those books. And then the second week, we will have a ballot which will just take the top vote getters from Round One. And then on the 21st will be very exciting, we will announce the mock award winners, shortly followed by the announcement of the real winners on January 25, 2021 at the American Library Association Youth Media Awards big press conference event. So, then we'll get to find out whether our mock picks match up with the real committee's picks. Just to give you a little bit more excitement surrounding the Sydney Taylor Book Award, there will once again be a blog tour happening February 8 to 12th. So that will be the opportunity to hear from the authors and illustrators, who are the winners of the real award. So my partners in crime, Susan and Chava, what have you learned or what have you enjoyed from this first year of running the Sydney Taylor Shmooze?
For me I've learned that Jewish publishing is really evolving and it's nice to see that, like there are more books about different subjects, there are more books for different ages and different genres, and that's exciting.
I like seeing all the opinions. I know what I think, and I love seeing what a lot of other people think so, not just the reviewer although I've been finding reviews, absolutely fascinating. But we also Heidi and I co administrate this Facebook group called the Jewish Kidlit Mavens, which is one of about 38 projects we do together, and I've been seeing a lot of comments there about the reviews and about what people think of the books as well and so I've been really enjoying that. And overall, I just love seeing all this talk and discussion about Jewish children's books, that is what I wanted, and that is so exciting to me.
I'm having a lot of fun with the fiddly bits. I'm enjoying seeing the spreadsheet get filled out "review received, review received, review received." It's just very satisfying, just fun to be in the back end of a blog and formatting things and putting the pictures. One of the things that I think is unique about the Sydney Taylor Shmooze is that we really give a lot of credit to the reviewers. You know, in a catalog where a new book is coming out you'll see a description of the book, and then you'll see a picture of the author and a little bio explaining they live in wherever, they have a cat, you know, whatever it is, but on The Sydney Taylor Shmooze, we don't talk about the author, we talk about the reviewer, so at the bottom is a picture and a bio of the person who wrote that book review. The reason that we are doing that, is that we really want people to be excited about being a part of this project. And we want them to be able to kvell about it and show it to their boss and get credit where credit is due. We're really thankful for the people who volunteer their time and are excited to be doing this project together with them, because this, this wouldn't have worked if other people weren't willing to come in and help out, and and share their thoughts because the three of us could never have reviewed all of these books, we could never have accomplished this.
Yeah, I'm really grateful to the reviewers, there have been so many different perspectives that I wouldn't have seen or known. I think they're doing a wonderful job and I'm really, really am grateful for that. It's what makes the whole thing work.
I talked to Heavy Medal and Guessing Geisel and Calling Caldecott. I've been asking them if they have any advice for us as the new kid on the mock block [echo and fade out].
I'm Julie Danielson. I blog at The Horn Book's Calling Caldecott, a mock award blog started in 2011, that's all focused on the Caldecott Award. The Caldecott Award is given by the Association for Library Services to Children, which is a division of the American Library Association. It's one of the many awards given out, and the Caldecott Award is given to the most distinguished picture book of the year. I believe the first year was 1938. It's really, really fun to find out what readers are excited about and you're going to love that. But just not to get too carried away with the competition aspect of it, pitting books against each other. We really wanted to emphasize that the joy for us is the rich discussions that we get to have. And yeah, just be as clear as possible with readers how the process works but you'll, you'll have fun with it.
My name is Steven Engelfried. I coordinate Heavy Medal, which is a mock Newbery blog on the School Library Journal website. The Newbery Medal has been given every year for... I think we're coming up on the 100th anniversary... by the American Library Association to the most distinguished children's book of the year. Really, the value is just looking at these books and having other people looking at the same books you are, and sharing opinions about it. The more open and welcoming we are to people's opinions the better. In a discussion with two people or with 20 or with 100, sometimes one opinion can be so strong and so committed that it can sort of rule the day. And people will back off and say oh I'm not sure I can counter that, but to have an atmosphere where all things are welcome, and we're talking not about the other people in our committee, not about the authors, but really about the book about the words on the page.
My name is Amy Seto Forrester. I am part of the Guessing Geisel mock blog about beginning readers, and the Geisel Award. The Geisel Award has been around I believe since 2006. It's awarded to the author and illustrator of what's considered the most distinguished beginning reader. I think it's been really interesting to look at our blog over time, to see which posts are popular, what people are engaging with, what people want more of. And that has really shaped how our blog has moved forward. So I guess I would say, listen to your readers, listen to your community, invite them into the conversation which I think you all do so well, because that's what makes a mock blog interesting and vibrant, is that it has a lot of voices and a lot of perspectives that we wouldn't get otherwise. [Fade back up]
Now that we've been doing this for nearly a year, do we have any advice? If there was some other new mock award blog that wanted to get started in January, do we have any advice to give them?
You know, I had always been envious of the mock blogs, I thought they were a huge amount of work. I thought there was no way to ever do one. And I really can't believe we're having this conversation at the end of a year of doing it. I didn't, I didn't think it was something that was achievable, actually. So I think my first piece of advice is that it is achievable. If you have a plan and also you need Heidi so you should really get Heidi, because that'll make a big difference. But I think that spreadsheets are key as Heidi mentioned, we also have been using a Google form to have reviewers fill out their reviews and then we're able to use that to put right on to the blog and I think that that makes a big difference. Also, the three of us all have different jobs and different things we do. And I think that all feeds into each other but I think my biggest advice is that it is possible.
Good. And I would also advise that you recruit Chava. She's so detail oriented, like, and keeps us on track.
You don't need me but you need Heidi and you need Chava!
But you're, you were the idea person. We wouldn't have thought of it.
My friend Amy Forrester on Guessing Geisel, she has three people and I thought that that was a really amazing model, and I do recommend having people to be able to portion out different jobs, because I think if it's all on one person that's really challenging.
Susan and Chava, thank you for running this mock award Sydney Taylor Shmooze blog with me and thank you for being on the podcast today.
Well, Heidi, thank you for all you do for The Shmooze, we couldn't do it without you.
Thank you for including me in, in one of your many projects that you do to promote Jewish children's literature.
Well go team, yay, yay us!
[TEASER] To hear my full conversation with Julie Danielson of Calling Caldecott, Steven Engelfried of Heavy Medal and Amy Seto Forrester of Guessing Geisel, tune into the bonus episode of The Book of Life coming up next.
[MUSIC, OUTRO] Don't be a stranger. Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473, or BookofLifepodcast@gmail.com. Check out our Book of Life Podcast Facebook page or our Facebook discussion group Jewish Kidlit Mavens. We are occasionally on Twitter too @bookoflifepod. 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. Our background music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening, and happy reading.