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THE BOOK OF LIFE - The 2023 Sydney Taylor Book Awards, Revealed!: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

THE BOOK OF LIFE - The 2023 Sydney Taylor Book Awards, Revealed!

AJL Holly Zimmerman38min

Martha Simpson

00:00

[COLD OPEN] There are so many different types of Jews. I mean, we should all be represented. Maybe the publishers will key in to the fact that we're recognizing diverse books and will encourage their authors to write more of them.

Heidi Rabinowitz

00:11

[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly. I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. It's January 2023, and it's time to share the exciting news about this year's Sydney Taylor Book Award winners. But before I do that, I want to remind you that America's school and public libraries are under attack right now by book banners who are trying to preserve white straight Christian dominance by suppressing diverse books. As we learned in my June 2022 podcast episode, "Unite Against Book Bans." This makes it all the more important that we celebrate Jewish books, especially this year's award winners that showcase the beautiful diversity of our community, including Jews of color, queer Jews, and Jews from a wide variety of backgrounds and observance practices. Please read these books, request them from your library, buy them if you can, talk about them with your friends and on social media, and use the hashtag #JewishBooksAreDiverseBooks. For even more Jewish kidlit titles that you can champion, check out my completely unofficial 2023 Sydney Taylor Book Award shortlist at Bookoflifepodcast.com. I'm pleased to learn that the real Sydney Taylor Book Award committee agreed with many of my picks.

Heidi Rabinowitz

01:48

Now, let's talk about the awards. The Sydney Taylor Book Awards are presented to the best Jewish children's and teen books by the Association of Jewish Libraries each January. They're sponsored by Jo Taylor Marshall, daughter of the author Sydney Taylor, who created the beloved All-of-a-Kind Family series. The 2023 winners were announced at the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards event on January 30, 2023. Here is my conversation with Martha Seif Simpson, chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee.

Heidi Rabinowitz

02:29

Martha Simpson, welcome to The Book of Life.

Martha Simpson

02:32

I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Heidi.

Heidi Rabinowitz

02:36

I'm very thrilled to have you here because it's time to reveal the winners of the 2023 Sydney Taylor Book Awards. We've got the three age group categories: picture book, middle grade, and young adult. Let's start with the gold medalists for all three categories, and then we can move on to honors and notables. What book was the winner in the picture book category?

Martha Simpson

03:02

All right, the winner is The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs by Chana Stiefel, illustrated by Susan Gal, published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.

Heidi Rabinowitz

03:18

So, The Tower of Life is an actual... it's sort of an interior tower, right? At the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Is that correct?

Martha Simpson

03:27

Yes, it's at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. A few years ago, I actually visited the museum and saw the Tower of Life. And I remember being impressed. So when this book came out, I was thrilled to actually see a book about how all these pictures came to be in that building.

Heidi Rabinowitz

03:46

What really impressed me about this book was it was a very positive and joyous and uplifting story, even though it was a Holocaust book, and that is so rare. It didn't focus so much on the tragedy as the joy of the lives of the villagers. Yaffa memorialized all of her friends and family by finding photos and remembrances of them from survivors and from other family members who had emigrated before the Shoah. So she was able to sort of reconstruct the village from memory and show the life that was there rather than focus on the death.

Martha Simpson

04:26

Yes.

Heidi Rabinowitz

04:27

And it just seemed really empowering.

Martha Simpson

04:30

I found it very interesting in the story that it was Yaffa's grandmother who took a lot of those pictures, and people sent them off to relatives and other countries and other places. And that is how Yaffa was able to find all these pictures. Again, she looked up all these people who had received these pictures over the years. So it really is a celebration of life of the people that lived there.

Heidi Rabinowitz

04:53

Yeah, that's beautiful. Okay, let's move on. Tell us about the winner in the middle grade category.

Martha Simpson

04:59

All right. Right, the winner in the middle grade category is Aviva vs. the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe, an Arthur A. Levine book, published by Levine Querido. This was one of the books that we've seen this year that has Orthodox Jewish representation. So that was very nice to see. I thought Aviva was such an interesting character, because she's the only one that can see this mischievous dybbuk that's running crazy in the in the mikvah. But she's also dealing with a lot of things: her father's death, her mother's reclusiveness, she's lost her best friend. And then there's acts of antisemitism going on in the area as well. The climax of the book took me by surprise, it was so powerful and unexpected. So I think Mari has done a wonderful job of storytelling.

Heidi Rabinowitz

05:47

Yeah, this was interesting, because it reminded me a lot of one of the books that got an honor last year, The Last Words We Said by Leah Scheier. Both of these are books that have Orthodox representation, but they come from secular publishers. And they both had people dealing with the death of a loved one, right, kind of unreliable narrators, sort of supernatural goings on. So that was interesting, those parallels, but at the same time, these are two extremely unique stories that stand completely on their own. It's just interesting that those themes were coming out in both of those stories.

Martha Simpson

06:27

Yes, it is a very interesting comparison.

Heidi Rabinowitz

06:30

Tell us about the winner in the young adult category.

Martha Simpson

06:33

In the young adult category, the winner is When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sasha Lamb, an Arthur A. Levine book, published by Levine Querido. So last year, the adult winter was also a historical fantasy with queer representation. And the two books are completely different.

Heidi Rabinowitz

06:52

So last year, it was The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros. So that was the winner in the young adult category.

Martha Simpson

06:58

So the idea of an angel and a demon as Talmud study partners intrigued me right away. They have this adventure traveling to America, which is completely different from any other immigrant story you will ever read about. The book has humor and drama, and it's full of Yiddishkeit. So what's not the like?

Heidi Rabinowitz

07:18

I interviewed Sasha Lamb for the podcast just recently, so I definitely agree that this is a terrific book. Excellent. So there were nine silver medalists, also known as Sydney Taylor Honor books, and also nine Notable books selected by the committee across the three age categories. Let's go ahead and name those books, and if you want to, tell me just briefly anything special about each of those titles. Go ahead with the silver medalists in the picture book category.

Martha Simpson

07:52

Okay, one of the silver medalists for picture books is Big Dreams, Small Fish, written and illustrated by the late Paula Cohen of blessed memory, an Arthur A. Levine book published by Levine Querido. I thought this book was a lot of fun, Shirley is a girl with a plan and she makes it work. Paula was truly a talented storyteller and artist. I'm so glad we were able to honor her.

Heidi Rabinowitz

08:18

Interestingly, that's the third book in a row that you named Levine Querido as the publisher, so they're doing terrific this year.

Martha Simpson

08:27

Yeah, I think they'll be very happy when we give them the call.

Heidi Rabinowitz

08:31

Yeah, and I've been impressed with their work. They only were established just a few years ago, and everything they do is just top quality. It's really impressive.

Martha Simpson

08:40

Yes.

Heidi Rabinowitz

08:40

Okay. What is the next silver medalist for picture books?

Martha Simpson

08:45

The Very Best Sukkah,A Story from Uganda by Shoshana Nambi, illustrated by Moran Yogev published by Kalaniot Books, an imprint of Endless Mountains Publishing company. Now, I don't think we've ever seen a book about the Abayudaya, Jews from Uganda. So it's wonderful to see how Jewish people in a different country celebrate; their traditions are similar to American traditions, but they're also so unique to their own culture. And the art just meshes perfectly.

Heidi Rabinowitz

09:16

Well, I definitely agree that this is a top notch book. As you may remember, I interviewed Shashana Nambi about this title, so I'm really excited that she's getting this recognition.

Martha Simpson

09:27

Another honor book in the picture book category is Sitting Shiva by Erin Silver, illustrated by Michelle Theodore, published by Orca Book Publishers. Now this book deals with the act of mourning the death of a parent in a very sensitive, calming way.

Heidi Rabinowitz

09:43

Yes, this was a beautiful book, it got me choked up... I mean, obviously a book like this is going to get you choked up, but I thought that it really portrayed the ups and downs that you would experience during the mourning period that, you know, you have moments of connection with the relatives who are coming to comfort you, as well as feeling wracked by grief. All of that is portrayed very realistically and beautifully here.

Martha Simpson

10:11

Right. It's a roller coaster of emotions. But it's done with very few words. The illustrations really do a lot of the work in this book. I also thought it was interesting that this was published by Orca. And last year, we had a notable middle grade book, also published by Orca, which took place in the funeral home, Sorry for Your Loss by Joanne Levy.

Heidi Rabinowitz

10:33

Yes, that's interesting. I had not made that connection, right. And Orca is a Canadian publisher. So good for them. Yes.

Martha Simpson

10:41

Yes. The author and illustrator for this book are also Canadian.

Heidi Rabinowitz

10:44

Okay, great. Give us more silver. What else won an honor?

Martha Simpson

10:49

Okay, we are now up to the middle grade honors. We have Honey and Me by Meira Drazin, published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. So this is another middle grade novel that is centered in an Orthodox community.

Heidi Rabinowitz

11:04

Excellent. So this is very exciting that we're starting to see so much Orthodox representation, also that this one is not about antisemitism. You mentioned that there is some antisemitism that Aviva has to deal with in Aviva vs. the Dybbuk. This one is just a completely peaceful, you know, ordinary day to day kind of school story, friendship story. So it's very normalizing.

Martha Simpson

11:32

Yes, a nicely done story. Okay. We have Black Bird Blue Road by Sofiya Pasternack published by Versify, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. So author Sofiya Pasternack is on a roll. This is her third honor. This story is also a fantasy that takes place in a faraway land, but it's completely different from her two Anya books. This one has a main character named Ziva, who's another strong female character, and her determination to save her brother Pesah, who is dying of leprosy, will keep kids reading. It's the kind of quest type story that really grips the reader.

Heidi Rabinowitz

12:09

I interviewed Sofiya Pasternack on the podcast back when she came out with her first book Anya and the Dragon, and she has definitely been on a roll and this book has been getting a lot of buzz.

Martha Simpson

12:20

Yes it has, I've noticed that.

Heidi Rabinowitz

12:22

Okay, what else?

Martha Simpson

12:23

Ellen Outside the Lines by AJ Sass, published by Little Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group Inc. Ellen is a very unique character. She's probably one of the most unique characters we've had. Ellen is a neurodiverse character. She's smart, and she's fun. You really want this girl to succeed. Later on in the book, she does decide to assume they/them pronouns, so she is learning more about herself while becoming independent. And I also love her relationship with her father. They speak Hebrew back and forth naturally, just as easily as they speak English. Her father is an Israeli immigrant. Her mother is a cantor!

Heidi Rabinowitz

13:01

Right, this was a very unusual story. Ellen is, as you say, very smart. And she's dealing with friendship issues, at the same time as learning to be more independent, breaking out of her shell dealing with new experiences, which as an autistic child is difficult for her.

Martha Simpson

13:18

Right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

13:19

And the relationships are so interesting. She has that immigrant dad, and then she has a friend in the, you know, there's a whole school group going to Barcelona, and one of the other students is non binary. Yeah, you know, it sounds like a lot. It sounds like an author who's trying to just stuff as many issues as they can into a book, but it doesn't feel that way at all. It all feels extremely natural. Okay, let's go on. I know we still have some more silvers to talk about.

Martha Simpson

13:45

Okay, we're heading to the young adult honor books now. We have My Fine Fellow: A Delicious Entanglement by Jennieke Cohen published by HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins publishes. So this is the culinary version of My Fair Lady. The chapter titles even reference some of the songs in the musical. I can totally see Elijah Little as the Jewish street urchin who wants to become a master chef. And I can see Helena Higgins as a pompous young lady who wants to show him off. So you can think of this as an 1830s imagining of those chef battle shows you see on TV these days.

Heidi Rabinowitz

14:24

What I thought was so interesting about this book is that in order to do a gender bend on My Fair Lady, they also had to basically do some world building because women at that time and place would not be empowered to experiment with some street urchin and try to raise him up. They wouldn't have had that agency,

Martha Simpson

14:47

Right. Jennieke said that she created the whole idea of culinarians. I mean, she made up that whole thing, and then she built up her characters to fit into that world. You're right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

14:56

Right, the author had to invent a situation in which there were certain professions that women were following and in which they could rise through the ranks and be considered experts so that she could create a Henry Higgins type of character who would be the top of their field and have a reason to be a know it all and want to teach somebody else as an experiment. So she really had to create that situation in order to have this story be possible, and it's fascinating the way she did that.

Martha Simpson

15:27

Okay, young adult silver, Some Kind of Hate by Sarah Darer Littman, published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. So antisemitism is not an easy topic to write about, but Sarah does an amazing job of actually getting inside the head of a depressed high school boy who gets radicalized little by little, you know, starting out with video games. He meets these white supremacists online, and it goes from there. It's a real eye opener, I think it would probably be a good idea if high schools required kids to read this, with discussions to go along with it, because it's a very heavy topic.

Heidi Rabinowitz

16:07

Yeah, I interviewed Sarah Darer Littman for the podcast. I'm happy to see that we agree on some of the top quality books coming out recently. Yes. I think that the book serves as a really good warning and lesson on the signs to look for to help people avoid that kind of situation.

Martha Simpson

16:26

Yeah, exactly. I mean, she, you know, identifes some of the code words that are used. It is worthy of a lot of discussions.

Heidi Rabinowitz

16:32

Yes. And I believe she's put some resources on her website to help people with that.

Martha Simpson

16:36

Yes. Okay. We have one more silver, Eight Nights of Flirting by Hannah Reynolds, published by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House. It was so much fun to return to the Nantucket setting of Hannah's last book, The Summer of Lost Letters, which was also a Sydney Taylor Honor book. So we're back with the Barbanel family, this huge extended family in one big house spending Hanukkah together. But this time, it's Shira who is the main character and she is the one who has a little romance.

Heidi Rabinowitz

17:08

It was really fun to read a Hanukkah romcom. There have been so many Christmas ones and we're just starting to see Hanukkah romcoms develop as a genre. I really enjoyed this book.

Martha Simpson

17:19

Yes.

Heidi Rabinowitz

17:21

Okay, so that's all of our silver medalists, right, but we've still got some notable books to talk about. Let's go back to the picture books and find out what books got notable status.

Martha Simpson

17:33

Okay, we had four notable picture books, and one of them is Tia Fortuna's New Home: A Jewish Cuban Journey by Ruth Behar, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth, published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Penguin Random House. This is a sweet story of an older woman who had emigrated from Cuba to the United States, and now she's moving again, and this time into a home for seniors. And the pictures show Sephardic representation. It's one of my favorite illustrated books of the year, because the pictures are so beautiful.

Heidi Rabinowitz

18:11

Well, living in Florida as I do, I appreciate stories that take place in Florida. I really liked the Miami setting, the evocation of the beach life. But as you say, I especially liked seeing that Sephardic representation. And I do want to make sure that listeners understand that Cuban Jews are not necessarily Sephardic. In this case, yes, but it's not the same thing as we learned from my recent interview with Bridget Hodder and Sarah Aroeste, the episode that we called It's Always a Party with a Sephardi. They did point out that those two things should not be conflated. But in this case, she is Cuban, and she is Sephardic. And it's a beautiful story about accepting change, and going with the flow and just finding joy wherever you can.

Martha Simpson

19:03

Right. And I think there's a fun element in the book that kids might like. It has this little yellow bird that appears in a lot of the pictures. And I know when my kids were little, they would look for characters that recurred from one page to another. And so I think this is kind of a fun thing for kids to go through it and look for the yellow bird in all the pictures too.

Heidi Rabinowitz

19:22

Oh, I hadn't noticed that. Thanks for pointing that out.

Martha Simpson

19:25

Okay. We have Madame Alexander, the Creator of the Iconic American Doll by Susan Goldman Rubin, illustrated by Sarah Dvojack, published by Feiwel and Friends, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group. So this year we received a few books about women inventors, and this one was my favorite. I think children will be fascinated to learn that dolls used to be made out of china that broke very easily. So someone had to come up with the idea to make dolls that kids could actually play with. Madame Alexander was the person to do that.

Heidi Rabinowitz

20:00

I completely missed this one. You know, I try to keep tabs on what Jewish books are coming out every year and I was completely unaware of this book. But I should have been keeping better tabs on Susan Goldman Rubin. She actually won the Sydney Taylor Book Award in 2012 for a biography of Leonard Bernstein called Music Was It. So I'm glad to see that she's keeping up the good work.

Martha Simpson

20:25

We also have Shoham's Bangle by Sarah Sassoon, illustrated by Noa Kelner published by Kar-Ben Publishing, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group. This is a refugee story, but it's an unusual one, because the characters are leaving Iraq to go to Israel. And that's a scenario we haven't seen before. It's deftly handled and it features a clever Nana. I'm always in for books with a clever Nana.

Heidi Rabinowitz

20:54

Well, I'm actually planning to interview Sarah Sassoon, so that's going to be on the podcast in the future. And I was very happy to see that Mizrahi representation.

Martha Simpson

21:05

Yes. Then we have Raquela's Seder by Joel Edward Stein, illustrated by Sarah Ugolotti, published by Kar-Ben Publishing, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group. Well, how do you explain the Spanish Inquisition to young children? It's not an easy topic. But this Passover story does that in a way that children can understand it.

Heidi Rabinowitz

21:28

Right, similar to the gold medalist, Tower of Life, this is a book that takes one of the major tragedies in Jewish history, and instead focuses on Jewish empowerment in relation to that tragedy. So here, we've got the Spanish Inquisition, but this family is finding workarounds so that they can maintain their Jewish identity safely.

Martha Simpson

21:52

Yes, yes. Okay, thanks. That brings us up to the middle grade notable titles.

Heidi Rabinowitz

21:57

Excellent.

Martha Simpson

21:57

So we have Alias Anna: A True Story of Outwitting the Nazis by Susan Hood with Greg Dawson, published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. And this was the other of the two Holocaust stories that we honored this year. And it's also one of three books in verse that we honored this year. Susan used several types of poetry to bring life to the true story of two Jewish girls growing up in Germany, who are musical prodigies, and they survived the Holocaust by assuming new names, different identities, and they actually performed for the Nazis, and excerpts from Greg's books about his mother are also included in the story. His mother actually was Zhanna, the oldest sister. There were prose pieces interspersed with the poetry from the books that Greg wrote after he researched about his mother.

Heidi Rabinowitz

22:51

Okay, excellent.

Martha Simpson

22:52

So we have The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner, written and illustrated by Marissa Moss, published by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS. So German Jewish scientist Lise Meitner spent her life as a chemist, being overshadowed by men who kept taking the credit for all her work. But in spite of that, she survived two world wars, and made lots of discoveries, including one that ended up finishing World War II. It's wonderful to see Lise Meitner finally getting the recognition she deserves. And Marissa Moss started each chapter was clever artwork that helps explain some of the difficult scientific concepts.

Heidi Rabinowitz

23:36

Wonderful. All right, two biographies in a row. All right. Do we have another biography coming up?

Martha Simpson

23:41

This is absolutely not a biography! This is The Prince of Steel Pier by Stacy Nockowitz. It's published by Kar-Ben Publishing, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group. I am not a big fan of gangster stories, but this one is a hoot. Joey is spending the summer during the 1970s in Atlantic City in a resort run by his Jewish family. All he wants to do is play skeeball all day. But somehow he gets noticed by the local mob boss and experiences the craziest summer ever after the mob boss hires him to keep track of his daughter. A lot of fun, a lot of crazy situations and you get to see what Atlantic City used to be like back in its heyday, just before all the casinos moved in.

Martha Simpson

23:41

Right, before the casinos. I really liked that this story took place in Atlantic City; one, because it's a setting that we have not really seen, probably in kids' books in general, certainly not in Jewish children's books. And then personally, I liked the connection because my dad used to spend his summers in Atlantic City as a kid and so I've always heard about that as sort of a destination for Jewish families. All right, terrific. What else do we have as notables?

Martha Simpson

24:54

We have two young adult notables. The first one is Ethel's Song: Ethel Rosenberg's Life in Poems by Barbara Krasner, published by Calkins Creek, an imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers. This is another nonfiction book written in verse. So most people today probably don't know about the tragic story of Ethel Rosenberg, who was falsely accused in the 1950s of being a communist spy. This book is a very sympathetic telling of her life. And it's beautifully written in a way that people can understand how she felt, it's from her point of view, and also how she ended up being betrayed. Very important book, I think.

Heidi Rabinowitz

25:36

Okay. And that's exciting because Barbara Krasner is a past member of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee. So it's nice that that has come around to her receiving this recognition.

Martha Simpson

25:47

Yes. Okay. And our last book is The Ghosts of Rose Hill by RM Romero, published by Peachtree Teen. And again, this is the third novel in verse that we recognized, but this time, it's a fantasy. Ilana Lopez is a biracial Jewish girl, and she's living with a relative in Prague. She finds an abandoned Jewish cemetery and starts cleaning it up and becomes involved with ghosts.

Heidi Rabinowitz

26:15

Yes, this one was very creepy. There was the... I guess he was sort of a river demon?

Martha Simpson

26:21

Right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

26:21

Right, who was keeping the ghosts trapped for his own nefarious purposes. And he wants to recruit Ilana, right? Yeah, it's quite creepy. And also kind of a romance. She's basically in love with a ghost, a ghost teenage boy. Very unusual, interesting setting and a nice little splash of diversity in there because she is Latinx too.

Martha Simpson

26:46

One of the committee members brought up the fact that when you saw the story was taking place in Prague you're gonna think, oh, there must be a golem in the story. But it isn't a golem, this time they had ghosts and river demons.

Heidi Rabinowitz

26:57

Yeah, well, that actually, that is very unusual to have a story that takes place in Prague and has no golem. So that in itself makes it unique.

Martha Simpson

27:05

Exactly.

Heidi Rabinowitz

27:06

Okay, now we've heard about all of the books, this is a wonderful selection! I did some number crunching just for fun, and I came up with some stats about the themes in the 21 recognized books that we've got this year. So 52% of them, 11 books, take place outside of North America, at least partially and from various places, as you just pointed out, Prague the story that takes place in a school trip to Barcelona, we've got the one from Uganda.

Martha Simpson

27:36

Raquela's Seder was in Spain.

Heidi Rabinowitz

27:38

Right, Spain during the Inquisition as well as Barcelona during contemporary times.

Martha Simpson

27:42

Right. The Woman Who Split the Atom was Germany for most of the book.

Heidi Rabinowitz

27:46

Right.

Martha Simpson

27:46

Oh, and the story of Shoham's Bangle, from Iraq.

Heidi Rabinowitz

27:49

Right, from the Middle East, right.

Martha Simpson

27:51

Going to Israel.

Heidi Rabinowitz

27:52

Yes, yes. Okay. So that's an interesting trend this year. There were 29%, six books, were non-Ashkenazi representation. I think that's probably a record. Right. And many kinds, there were Sephardic representation, Mizrahi, Abayudaya. And it's wonderful to have the diversity of Judaism showcased in this way. Do you think that this is itself a new trend? And beyond those recognized, did you see other submissions with non-Ashkenazi representation?

Martha Simpson

28:23

Yes, I did. We had a book with Persian representation.

Heidi Rabinowitz

28:27

Oh, right. A Persian Passover by Eitan Basseri.

Martha Simpson

28:30

Right, right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

28:31

It was on the Holiday Highlights list from AJL in the spring.

Martha Simpson

28:34

Right. I would love to see this as a trend. There are so many different types of Jews. I mean, we should all be represented. Maybe the publishers will key in to the fact that we're recognizing diverse books, and will encourage their authors to write more of them.

Heidi Rabinowitz

28:47

Well, I'm sure the award can only help. Four books, 19%, were biographies. Four books, 19%, had a Lower East Side setting at least partially so that is something that we would expect, but maybe that's even lower than usual, right? We had three fantasy books, that's 14%; three novels in verse, as you pointed out, that's 14%. We had two books each, 10% each, for queer representation, contemporary Orthodox representation, and for Holocaust. So that was the breakdown that I was looking at; of course, you could categorize them in other ways, right. So I wanted to mention that I am really happy that out of the 21 books being recognized, only two are related to the Holocaust. That's a lot better than last year's 25%. And a lot better than the 50% figure that we tend to see, with half the Jewish kidlit each year being related to the Holocaust. Did the committee make a conscious effort to recognize books about Jewish joy instead of trauma?

Martha Simpson

29:53

I don't think we did. The point of fact is that I don't think we received as many Holocaust books this year as in past years. We did receive several books that took place during World War II, but they didn't really have much Jewish representation in them. And I think publishers have to get over the idea that just because it takes place during World War II, it is therefore a Holocaust book, and it is therefore going to be something that would be eligible for consideration by the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee. This year, I think we just got a lot more books of varying settings, and those are the ones that we choose from.

Heidi Rabinowitz

30:30

Okay, well, that's an exciting development, because anybody who's listened to this podcast for a while knows that I feel strongly that we need to branch out and not focus so much on the Holocaust, because it's just out of balance. What other trends are you noticing besides those, we've talked about?

Martha Simpson

30:48

Trends that I noticed a lot: Jewish communities holding together, smart women and girls, neurodiverse characters. I mean, we recognized Ellen Outside the Lines, but there were other books that we had received as well that have neurodiverse characters. Last year, we had one book with a dybbuk that was a winner, The City Beautiful, and this year, both the middle grade and the young adult book had dybbuks.

Martha Simpson

30:48

That's interesting. You know, we're so used to seeing golem stories, and now I guess, dybukks are the new hot new thing!

Martha Simpson

31:04

While we're still getting golem stories, none of them made our list this year. But I think there's always going to be golem stories.

Heidi Rabinowitz

31:24

In the pool of submissions you had even more dybbuks, than just these that were recognized?

Martha Simpson

31:29

We actually did have a couple more.

Heidi Rabinowitz

31:30

And golems as well?

Martha Simpson

31:32

And golems as well.

Heidi Rabinowitz

31:33

Wow. Well, this is very exciting. As always, it's so cool to see the way that the literature is just expanding to embrace more and more identities. The books are catching up with reality to show that Judaism is extremely diverse. That's wonderful.

Martha Simpson

31:52

Right.

Heidi Rabinowitz

31:54

If listeners want to find out more about the Sydney Taylor Book Award, or to get a list of winners, where can they find that information?

Martha Simpson

32:02

The Association of Jewish Libraries website, JewishLibraries.org. And you can also look them up directly by going to SydneyTaylorBookAwards.org.

Heidi Rabinowitz

32:14

Right, that is plural. That is SydneyTaylorBookAwards with an S. There's going to be a list of this year's winners, an annotated list of all of the winners ever since 1968, which will include gold, silver, and notable from '68 through this year, the press release that describes everything that's going on... so you can get full information at that website. In the past several years, the winning authors and illustrators have been part of a Sydney Taylor Book Award blog tour, which is basically a virtual book tour. Will that be happening again this year?

Martha Simpson

32:47

Yes, we will get that organized. That will be happening the second week of February, and we will get that information to you so you can post it everywhere so people will know about it.

Heidi Rabinowitz

32:58

I will be happy to do that. So it's Tikkun Olam time. What action would you like to call listeners to take to help heal the world?

Martha Simpson

33:07

Well, as you know, Heidi, censorship and book bans have been on the rise. And last year was especially bad. There are some very vocal groups that are trying to dictate what should and should not be in school and public libraries. Books with queer representation and anti racist themes have been especially targeted. And even if books aren't officially banned by local or state governments, many school administrators have removed these titles because they don't want to have to face the book banners. So for Tikkun Olam, I'm asking people to support the authors of these books that show up on censorship lists. So read the books, check them out of your library, buy them if you can. And there are two excellent resources that work to combat book bands, the National Coalition Against Censorship, their website is ncac.org. And another is Unite Against Book Bans, and their website is UniteAgainstBookBans.org. And you can look them both up, you can find lots of toolkits with tips for discussing these books, and for advocating for banned books. So I hope people will take that action.

Heidi Rabinowitz

34:24

Thank you. That's an excellent recommendation. And I do want to remind listeners that I interviewed Deborah Caldwell-Stone from the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom. She was telling us all about the Unite Against Book Bans campaign, so go back and take a listen to that podcast episode as well. Martha, is there anything else that you would like to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you?

Martha Simpson

34:48

Yes, I would like to recognize the members of the 2023 Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, and they are: Debra S. Gold from Cuyahoga County Library, Cleveland, Ohio, retired. Carla Kozak, San Francisco Public Library, retired. Aviva Rosenberg, Ridgefield Free Public Library, Ridgefield, New Jersey, and she will be the incoming Chair for the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee. We also have Talya Sokoll, Noble and Greenough School, Dedham, Massachusetts; Arielle Vishny, freelance writer in New York, New York, and Kay Weisman Booklist reviewer, Vancouver, British Columbia. And of course, I want to thank Rebecca Levitan, my mentor; she was the past Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee chair before me and she has been valuable help during these two years as my chair. And of course I want to thank Jo Taylor Marshall. She's a delightful person, and we're so glad that she has been supporting this award all these years.

Heidi Rabinowitz

35:51

Yes, thank you, Jo. Actually, that reminds me that many many years ago, I interviewed Jo Taylor Marshall for the podcast because this podcast has been going on since the dawn of time. She's a snowbird so I interviewed her here in Florida quite a while back. So I do want to just mention, speaking of all things Sydney Taylor, that the Sydney Taylor Shmooze is the mock award blog that reviews Jewish books year round. Of course, on that blog, we get very excited about the real award as well as the mock awards, you can go to SydneyTaylorShmooze.com, to see the recent winners of the 2023 Mock Sydney Taylor Award chosen by popular vote. And then we'll also of course post the real winners there as well. Martha, thank you so much for speaking with me, and Mazel Tov on a job well done with your committee choosing such excellent titles.

Martha Simpson

36:47

Thank you. It's been a joy to be on the committee. Happy to see all these wonderful books being added to libraries everywhere. And I know the committee will do great work this year as well.

Sarah Sassoon

37:03

Hi, this is Sarah Sassoon, author of Shoham's Bangle. I'll be joining you soon on The Book of Life podcast. I'd like to dedicate my episode to my grandparents, and all 120,000 Jews who had to leave Iraq in 1950-51 with Operation Ezra and Nehemiah to Israel, and also to their descendants who will continue their legacy.

Heidi Rabinowitz

37:28

[MUSIC, OUTRO] 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. Additional support comes from the Association of Jewish Libraries, which also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. 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!

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