[COLD OPEN] Why do Jews write Christmas songs? And tell us what Christmas songs were written by Jews?
Jewish songwriters would be asked to write something and would see an opportunity to write a popular song. "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "White Christmas," "Silver Bells," "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "Winter Wonderland," "Rudolph, Red Nosed Reindeer," "Jingle Bell Rock" ... like, it just keeps going.
[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly. I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. Christmas and Hanukkah overlap this year, with Hanukkah beginning on December 25th, 2024, so it's a good time to think about the juxtaposition of these two holidays. Hanukkah is a minor holiday, but its proximity to Christmas brings it extra attention.
To help me discuss this phenomenon, I've got three guests today. Henry Herz is the editor of a new anthology of short stories, The Festival of Lights: 16 Hanukkah Stories. He also wrote a story for the collection. My other two guests also wrote stories for The Festival of Lights, and they've each independently written other Hanukkah books. Joanne Levy is co-author with Marissa Meyer of the new middle grade novel, Let It Glow. And Erica Perl is the author of the picture book The Ninth Night of Hanukkah. You'll find links to my guests' websites and their reading recommendations at bookoflifepodcast.com. Now let's dig into this very December 25th Hanukkah.
Henry Herz and Erica Perl, welcome for the first time to The Book of Life.
Hi. It's so nice to be here. I love the show, and I'm really honored to be part of it today.
I'm happy to be here, too. Thank you.
And Joanne Levy, welcome back. You were on the show in 2020 to talk about Fish Out of Water, and in 2022 to talk about Sorry For Your Loss. And it's two years later, so I guess it's time for you to come back for another visit.
Thanks for having me back.
So I'd like to start by asking each of you to just briefly introduce yourself. So Henry, why don't you go first?
I am the author of 14 picture books. And I also write short stories, middle grade, young adult, and adult, particularly in fantasy, science fiction and horror. And I also love to compile anthologies. I'm working on my eighth anthology as an editor and curator, so to speak.
Hi, I'm Erica S Perl. I write books for young people from birth all the way through early teens and then some. I'm the author of about 40 something books, including The Ninth Night of Hanukkah and All Three Stooges, which won the National Jewish Book Award.
I'm Joanne Levy, and I'm the author of a bunch of middle grade books, most notably, Sorry For Your Loss, won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, and that is the book that's most special to me, and it's set in a Jewish funeral home based on the one my dad manages.
We're here to talk about Hanukkah. Now, Hanukkah and Christmas overlap this year. In 2024, the first night of Hanukkah is on December 25th, so this seems like a good time to think about the juxtaposition of these two holidays. Now, as we know, Hanukkah is a minor holiday, and it's gained prominence because of its proximity to the major holiday of Christmas. And with the majority population in the western world in a good mood at this time of year with "tidings of comfort and joy" and "good will towards men," it's kind of turned into the time of year when Jews basically get the best PR through Hanukkah. And while technically, Hanukkah is not "the Jewish Christmas," I feel like we've kind of adapted it into something like that in order to bask in the reflected light of Christmas. So I wanted to ask what you all think about that.
I mean, I think that's true. I'm not thrilled about it, because they really have nothing to do with one another, but anything that helps us be viewed as not "other," that's good.
The Jewish Christmas thing kind of makes me a little upset, and we actually wrote it into Let It Glow, where somebody who doesn't know about Hanukkah calls it the Jewish Christmas. And it sort of triggers me a little because it feels like pulling us into the Christmas fold of ubiquitousness of the season.
I grew up in northern Vermont, and I was one of very few Jewish kids in the school I went to, and I definitely felt like all my friends had Christmas, and I looked at it with a lot of envy, because it was such a feature of so much of life in that area. So I can relate to Jewish kids who feel this pull in that way. Maybe we should make a bigger deal out of Hanukkah in order to sort of compete. I see it as an opportunity to educate and share differences, although obviously many families celebrate both as well, right?
Can I add, the normalization of Christmas is so complete that somebody said something about Christmas not being religious, and everybody should celebrate it, and that person just could not fathom that somebody outside their own experience would not want to celebrate Christmas. And it's sort of that Christian-centric thinking that, you know, makes us feel other, and I really feel the need to push back on that.
Now, when Joanne says push back, she means, she slapped the person in the face! [laughter]
I want to share a personal story with you. So when I was little, my family was very assimilated, and we would light the menorah, but we also would put up a Christmas tree because my parents didn't want me and my sister to feel left out. And it wasn't until I was a teenager that my dad started to feel weird about that, and we transitioned to a "Hanukkah Bush," and then we just stopped doing it, and we started having Shabbat dinners and getting more reconnected. And I think maybe it was easier to make that change once my sister and I were older and they didn't have to, quote, unquote, deprive us of something shiny. And it wasn't even that all our friends had Christmas because we lived in a pretty Jewish neighborhood, but society was telling us that we should be excited about Christmas, and my folks just didn't know how to tell us otherwise. So that's my story. I'm wondering how did you or your family deal with Christmas during your Jewish childhood, and how does your family deal with it now?
I can relate, because we had these mini Christmassy things when I was a kid. To this day, I have a stocking. I actually have two stockings. I have the stocking that I had when I was a child. And then when I met my husband and went to his family, his mom is Jewish and his dad is Christian, so they had both in their house. And his Jewish mom, who was a Holocaust refugee, knitted me a stocking. And so I have these warm associations with it, just out of the generosity and the kindness and the fact that when I was a child, it was given to me kind of as you describe, Heidi, out of like not wanting to deprive your kids of something. And my parents definitely backed away from it as my brother and I got older, and the only tradition that stayed was that my parents would make red and green french toast using food coloring.
Just like the Jews did in the desert!
She sometimes makes it with challah which makes it even more like crossing all sorts of mixed metaphors. It came from a good place, and I honor it as that.
We didn't feel like we were missing out. The math, when you're a little boy, is very simple: eight nights of presents, greater than one night of presents; I'm all in. So we were not jonesing for Christmas, and same for our kids.
My experience was similar to Henry's, in that my mother was very focused only on Hanukkah, and there would be no Christmas in the house other than Christmas chocolates. We would get our solid Santa Claus chocolate. And at Easter we would get, you know, at Passover, we would get the Easter Bunny chocolates as well. But that's it, just the chocolates.
It's interesting. We've got a mix of experiences among the four of us. For Jewish families or other non-Christian families, do any of you have any advice about dealing with the holiday season?
I think that people should do what feels right for them. You know, in this age of social media, people are always making assumptions, making judgments. It's a personal decision, what people do in their own homes. And I think that we'd be a better world if everybody was a little more open to letting people find their own traditions, invent their own traditions, preserve their own traditions, particularly because so many families blend multiple cultures and have that sort of intersectionality these days, which is wonderful.
Yeah, and there's so many blended families out there, that whatever people want to do to celebrate, I think, is a good thing. And you know, there is more Christmas chocolate than there is Hanukkah chocolate. So.
I wrote this book The Ninth Night of Hanukkah, which is about thanking helpers. And I heard from a Lutheran church that was doing activities around it, which I thought was so cool. You know, they weren't celebrating Hanukkah, but they liked the idea about thanking helpers. I think that's great. I'm very open to the idea of non-Jewish people taking what's special about Hanukkah and honoring it,
Henry, I wanted to ask you about the anthology, Festival of Lights. Tell us a bit about the process of putting the anthology together.
I met Joanne on the Author Israel Trip sponsored by PJ Our Way. I think Erica had gone the previous year. It's a wonderful experience, and they do it to really inspire authors to create more Jewish content. I got to meet a bunch of really good authors as well, and I was like, I love doing anthologies. I love the collaboration. So I came up with an idea of Festival of Lights. Usually you don't write it in advance. You submit a proposal to publishers, and then if they're interested, then you tell the authors, okay, it's go time, time to write a story. It's fun. It's a lot of cat herding. But these are all professional authors, and so other than the occasional reminder, it's pretty smooth. You deal with professionals, it's a pleasant experience. I feel good, we got a nice variety, different focuses, some on music, some on food, some on tradition, some where the holiday is the setting but what's going on is not necessarily specific to the holidays.
How do you pronounce the title of your story, Henry?
That's a great question. You put me on the spot. I don't speak German, so I would mangle it. The translation is "the magic spatula" or "the magic spoon." I went with German because in the story that kid's great grandfather was from Germany and owned and ran a restaurant called The Magic Spoon. I just thought it would feel more authentic if the title of the story was in German. But don't ask me to pronounce it.
The Magic Spoon. So I'll mangle it for you. The story is called ... Der Verzauberte Löffel, maybe?
Awesome.
But it means "the magic spoon." So tell us about the story.
So we have this kid, and there's this bully. They have to do a school report, and he panics, and he's like, out of ideas. And he glances over and he sees a baking contest. He's like, if I win this contest, you've got to wear your underwear on your head. He's never baked before, but his great grandfather, back in the old country, ran a restaurant, and they have some relics up in the attic. And he finds some old recipes, and he finds this spoon that says "the magic spoon" in German, but that's just the name of the restaurant. It's not magic... or is it? He tries to make a couple things, and it turns out catastrophically bad. But he gets better, he's learning, and things work out better for him the day of. He makes sufganiyot, so there's oil involved as a little pun there, the miracle of the oil not burning himself or the treats. And instead of making the bully wear underwear on his head, he's like, if you taste this, you don't have to wear underwear on your head. He kind of wins over the bad guy by not rubbing his face in his victory. So it was a miracle!
A Hanukkah miracle. Erica, your short story in the anthology also had this theme about feeling othered. Can you tell us about your story, "The Most Jewish Christmas Song Ever"?
Sure. I grew up in a predominantly Christian area and participated in many Christmas concerts and caroling sessions. So I wanted to write a story that drew on that. I wrote a story about a girl who is excited about her school's holiday concert, although resigned to the fact that, since she's one of the only Jewish kids, she will be assigned The Dreidel Song. But that's not what happens. She is instead given an opportunity to have a spotlight on her, but singing an extremely Christian song that makes her really uncomfortable, because she feels like singing these words, that she doesn't believe in, are a betrayal of her faith and her values. And she just can't bring herself to tell her over-the-top Christmassy teacher the truth. So she tries a variety of other strategies to get out of it: faking laryngitis, trying to swap songs on the sly. She digs herself in even deeper. She struggles with it, and happily has a conversation with her grandmother that gets her, not necessarily middle ground, but a way of being true to herself and still singing her heart out. I won't spoil it, but she finds her way to be extremely Jewish in the middle of a sea of red and green.
So the story talks about this phenomenon that a lot of Christmas songs were written by Jews. So tell us more about that. Why do Jews write Christmas songs? And tell us what Christmas songs were written by Jews.
It's so interesting. So many of them! Not the religious historical ones, but the more contemporary, popular Christmas songs that you hear on the radio, that are everywhere during the season. Many of them were written by Jewish composers, lyricists. It makes sense when you think about the fact that there are so many Jewish songwriters who would be asked to write something and would see an opportunity to write a popular song.
"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "White Christmas," "Silver Bells," "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "Winter Wonderland," "Rudolph, Red Nosed Reindeer," "Jingle Bell Rock" ... like, it just keeps going.
It's kind of astounding. I mean, some of these were written by people who were already very well established, and some of them were written by people who, this was their first big hit, and they then went on to become ever associated with that song.
Joanne, your short story was one of those that did not talk about Christmas. It just focused on Hanukkah. And it was lovely that it was about the characters from Sorry For Your Loss, so it was great to see them again. Tell us about that story and how you chose what to write about.
It was really great to revisit Evie and Oren from Sorry For Your Loss. People have said they wanted more about Evie and Oren, but I didn't feel like they had a full story. When Sorry For Your Loss ends, it's in the summer, So Oren has not gone through a Hanukkah without his parents. Because, spoiler alert, he loses his parents in Sorry For Your Loss, and that's pretty much what the book is about. So he's struggling with the holiday because it's such a family oriented holiday, and he has some survivor's guilt, and he doesn't really know if he should be celebrating the holiday. Through Evie and her sort of loud meddling, she helps him through. It's a happy ending, so I'm not spoiling anything, but it was just so much fun to return to those characters.
Awesome. Yes, it was great to see them again, like meeting old friends.
Thank you.
Yeah. Erica, your picture book, The Ninth Night of Hanukkah, came out exactly when I needed it. It was actually published in 2020 but I read an advance review copy in December 2019 which was a very violent Hanukkah season. That was the year of the shooting at the Jewish grocery store and the stabbing of a rabbi at a Hanukkah party. So it was very comforting to me to read your story about diverse neighbors helping each other celebrate Hanukkah. So tell us more about that book and about the Shamash Night holiday that you invented to go along with it.
I hadn't realized you read it during that time, but that's so meaningful, so thanks for sharing that. The Ninth Night of Hanukkah is illustrated by Shahar Kober, who's an Israeli illustrator who did the beautiful pictures. And it is the story of a family that moves into an apartment building right as Hanukkah begins. They've somehow misplaced all of their Hanukkah things: their menorah, their candles, Dad's lucky latke pan. And so they start going around the building to borrow different things on different nights, and the neighbors have items that are kind of close, but not perfect. So, no one has Hanukkah candles, but someone has a box of birthday candles, so they light the teeny, tiny shomash. No one has gelt; someone has chocolate chips. And the kids realize that the Hanukkiah has nine branches. There's this branch for the shomash, which is every night helping all the other candles get lit, but it never has a night in which we say, "thank you, Shamash," it's just the unseen helper. And they're surrounded by unseen helpers: everyone in their building has been helping them celebrate the holiday. And so the two kids invite all their neighbors on that ninth night, they have this wonderful party.
And so the spirit of the book, and the idea of the book, is that readers can celebrate the ninth night of Hanukkah. Everyone can do it, and it's as simple as thanking the unseen helpers in your life: crossing guards and the piano teachers and the babysitters and the relatives and friends who help us get through life and make our lives that much better. And I started trying to do this in my own congregation and community, and it has spread since then, which has been really lovely to see, sort of resonating with people. It was a book I finished long before the pandemic, it came out quietly in 2020 and it was sort of bizarre and surreal to see how much we needed people in the time that the book came out. Like all of a sudden we were delivering toilet paper to each other's doorsteps. It was nice to be able to have something to say when it was so deserving of being said.
Yeah, it was the right timing for it. That was a time when the helpers were more helpful than usual, or we were more aware of their help, maybe; but it's always the right time to thank the helpers.
Absolutely.
And can I just say, I think it's the most brilliant concept and a beautiful book, and thank you for writing it.
Oh, thanks. I really, really appreciate it. Honestly, it came from my kids. I'd never noticed that there were nine branches of the Hanukkah menorah. Like I'd never really thought about that, and they said something in passing about it years ago. I give them credit.
It's the kids that notice the smart things.
They do! I was gonna say, I was not the smart person who noticed that, but I wrote it down.
But isn't that the essence of book ideas? You get an idea from something you observe, something somebody says. You never know where you're going to get a book idea.
Absolutely. The most important thing is just writing stuff down. It's so easy to tell yourself, it's not a good idea, it's not going to go anywhere. Write it down anyway, figure it out later. Because I think we can all agree, all of our books would not exist if we hadn't just had some sort of idea, not fully formed, not sure where it's going, but if you write it down, it can become something.
All right, thank you. Joanne, your new middle grade novel, Let It Glow, co-written with Marissa Meyer, is very much about the contrast between Hanukkah and Christmas. So please tell us about that new book.
Sure; it is been compared to The Parent Trap, which is really funny because I've never seen the movie. It is about twins separated at birth, who are adopted into different families. One is Jewish, one is not. They meet at a holiday pageant, and they discover each other for the first time, they decide to swap homes for the holidays, and hilarity ensues.
And how did you end up co-authoring this book with Marissa Meyer?
So I was talking to my agent when she says, You know, I keep hearing from editors they want holiday stories. And I thought, oh, okay, I want to write a Hanukkah story. We were brainstorming on the phone, and she says, What about something with Christmas AND Hanukkah? And we brainstormed a little more, and we came up with the twins separated at birth. So off I went to start writing it. And I fully intended to write this book completely on my own. And I got about four chapters in, and I realized I have no lived experience of Christmas, and I had sort of assumed that through Hallmark movies and commercials that I knew about Christmas, but I really didn't know what's at the heart of Christmas, and what people who celebrate Christmas really love about the holiday. So I realized, I can't write this book on my own. I thought about who I would like to approach to write Holly, the character who celebrates Christmas. And I've worked for Marissa as her author assistant for several years, so I'm familiar with her writing and her process, which is completely different to mine. And she has twin adopted girls, and I'm adopted, and we've talked about adoption before, and she loves Christmas, and I thought, bingo. And it was honestly the most fun thing I've ever written. She took Holly and I took Aviva, the two twins, the rest is history.
So you wrote the Jewish sister Aviva. Why did you decide that Aviva should feel so unconnected to her heritage at the beginning of the story?
I wanted her to sort of echo my experience as a kid. I grew up in a very secular... very Jewish, but secular Jewish home, and I myself have had the feeling of not feeling Jewish enough, whatever that means. And I think it's a pretty common thing for Jews to think, Oh, I'm not doing enough. I'm not going to shul often enough, I don't know Hebrew. And to sort of explore that experience and have Aviva learn that she's Jewish enough as she is, and if she wants to pursue becoming more religious or more observant, that's entirely up to her, but it doesn't make her any less Jewish if she decides not to.
Joanne, tell us what Marissa has shared with you about her experience of Hanukkah as a non-Jew.
I know she loves Christmas more on a secular level for herself, but one of the things that I thought was absolutely amazing is that when we started writing it, she decided she wanted to expose her girls to Hanukkah. And she and the girls actually made latkes and decided which toppings they liked best, and they watched videos about Hanukkah and some of the Hanukkah songs. So they sort of immersed themselves in Hanukkah. They had a really good time doing that.
Did Marissa say if writing Let It Glow caused her to learn new things about the Jewish experience of the holiday season?
I think it gave her a little bit of perspective. And that's really what I want to do with the book, is show people who celebrate Christmas that Christmas is great, and you have your traditions and they're wonderful, but it's not what everybody celebrates. I mean, you don't want to be a Scrooge about it, but sometimes you go to the mall and you don't want to hear Christmas carols constantly from October to January. I try not to be too crabby about it, but....
So, speaking of that, I want to do a little thought experiment. I don't know if you're familiar, but there's a social media account called Jew Who Has It All. It's a satirical account that imagines a world in which Jews are the majority, and I will link to it in the show notes. So by turning the world on its head, it makes us more aware of the Christian-normative society that we live in, and just how much of what is accepted as just normal, typical American stuff actually isn't universal.
So imagine, if you will, a world in which Judaism is the dominant culture in North America and Christians are a tiny minority. What do you think Hanukkah or the holiday season would look like in that world? And I know I'm putting you on the spot, but take, take a moment and just sort of think about, what do you think it would be like?
I don't think people would make fruitcake. It would be babka. I think it would be babka.
I think that would be an improvement.
Yes,
Definitely. Latkes would be everywhere, all different kinds of latkes.
Yeah, it's true. In the same way that you now see candy canes in all sorts of crazy flavors, I think that latkes would start being... I mean, they're already made out of all sorts of different vegetables, but I think latkes would just become, like ubiquitous.
In this scenario, I couldn't decide in my imagination, Hanukkah would either be a quick blip on the calendar because it is a minor holiday, and fewer Jews would think about it than they do in our reality. Or maybe it would get commercialized because of being the dominant culture, but probably would resemble Christmas less. Like maybe it would be more about the Maccabees and less about the candles, because it wouldn't be in competition with the Christmas lights.
What about Hallmark? What about all those Hallmark movies? We could we got a whole bunch of Hanukkah Hallmark movies!
Well, if you go and read the posts on Jew Who Has It All, they've got this long thread of imaginary Hallmark movies for Sukkot, or something where there really are no movies, but they had just these wonderful descriptions that make you want to see these movies!
I did a quick skim, and it's really funny, and it kind of makes you feel good as a Jew, like you certainly don't feel alone when you read the comments.
Yes, I highly recommend it.
Isn't Dune a Sukkot movie? It's wandering in the desert.
You can make an argument for that.
I'm thinking more romantic vibes in the sukkah.
You can make a rom com out of anything, right? And I think in this kind of world I'm imagining, the biggest glitteriest holiday would probably be Purim, because it's the most like a party, and the shalach manot baskets would be expanded into a major excuse for gift giving. People would be planning their costumes a year in advance, like people do for Halloween.
Pop up Purim stores.
Yes!
Oh my gosh, that would be great.
And everybody would get High Holidays off.
Right!
And people who celebrate Christmas would have to grumble because, well, it doesn't fall on Hanukkah this year, so you're going to have to work!
Exactly. And that's the exact kind of thing that you see in this account. So it's a lot of fun to see everything sort of topsy turvy like that.
Is there a Hanukkah book or some other Jewish book that would make a good Hanukkah gift, that you would like to shout out right now, besides your own books?
I have two. The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming...
Yes, I love that book!
...is one of my very favorite Hanukkah books. Satire-ish. It's Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler and Lisa Brown. I actually have two copies here. One of them is even signed. That's my favorite for humor And also Red and Green and Blue and White by Lee Wind and Paul Zelinsky, because it's just a beautiful book about inclusion and allyship, and I think it's something we all need right now.
Absolutely, and I agree with both your choices, as shown by the fact that I interviewed Lee Wind about that book when it came out, so that's on the podcast, and the Lemony Snicket book, I've got a print interview on my blog, and so I agree with your choices.
And they just reissued it. It was out of print for many years.
Yes, I was very excited when it came back.
I have a couple that I thought of. On the latke theme, you guys are all familiar with Meet the Latkes by Alan Silberberg. He has a couple of board books out, including Latke's First Hanukkah, which I think is adorable, a baby latke celebrating Hanukkah. And also P Is For Pastrami to go with it. So you can really, you know, have fun with the littlest celebrants of Hanukkah this year with those. And then I had two new and newish books that I was going to suggest. One is Veera Hiranandani and Vesper Stamper have a picture book coming out called The Greatest, which is about a relationship with grandparents, and it's really beautiful. And so I think that would be really nice gift for the picture book set. And then for older kids, I'm a big fan of the book What Jewish Looks Like, two authors and one illustrator, Liz Kleinrock, Caroline Kusin Pritchard, and illustrated by Iris Gottlieb. It's an incredible compendium of a variety of different Jewish people in a variety of different fields, who all look a lot of different ways and demonstrate how much diversity there is within Judaism. So I think that'd be a great gift for older readers.
All right, thanks for all those suggestions. It's Tikkun Olam Time. So I want to ask each of you what action you would like to call listeners to take to help heal the world.
Fighting global warming, I think, is something that needs to be happening immediately, because we're seeing record temperatures, and really need to encourage your elected officials to make it a priority to work on combating global warming.
Thank you. Excellent. Erica?
I heartiily agree with Henry on this. There's a lot to be done there. The thing that I was thinking of is I would love to encourage people to celebrate the ninth night of Hanukkah by thanking a helper in their life, whether you have a ninth night party or whether you just quietly whisper a word of thanks, making the world a better place could be done in a very large scale and a very small one, and both really matter.
Thank you. Joanne?
Lately it's been such a divisive time, and it's been a hard time for Jews, particularly. And my activism always begins with books, as I think it's the best way to get to kids before the seeds of hate grow, and giving kids diverse books is the best way to build empathy. So my ask is actually twofold. I'd like you to give a non-Jewish person a book with a Jewish main character or Jewish main characters to read, and then go out of your way to read a book about someone who is not like you, because I strongly believe that the empathy thing is for absolutely everyone.
Excellent. Thank you. What are each of you working on next?
I have a picture book. It's kind of inspired by what's going on in Israel and Gaza. It's either a really good time or really bad time for this book. It started with, you know, from the Jewish perspective, but it's basically about how different ethical religions are just different paths up to the same spiritual mountaintop. There's a lot of stuff in biblical literature about kindness to animals, and that's something that we can all agree on, regardless of our religion, so. And then, yes, I'm working on several anthologies. One we're in negotiations on with a Big Five publisher. It's not Jewish. It's the biggest project of my life, because, like fifteen New York Times best selling authors have agreed to provide a story. So I'm, like, super excited about that project, but I've got others lined up behind it. It's a good thing I'm organized. It's hard to run an anthology. It's not for the faint of heart. Spreadsheets are your friend.
All right. Erica, what are you working on?
So I feel like I should "out myself" and say that my next two books that are coming out are Christmas books. I happened to author and co-author two Christmas picture books that will have come out newly when this episode airs. I am doing what the songwriters did: I'm a Jewish person who writes Christmas books now. Although I should also say that I come by it honestly: the first book that I ever wrote when I was a little kid was called The Bear's Chirstmas and Other Stories," which I always laugh about, because I was so Christmas-illiterate that I did not know how to spell the word Christmas. It's misspelled on the cover.
That's cute.
But since then, I've been making up for lost time. I know a little bit more now, and I can now write Christmas picture books. One is How Carrot and Cookie Saved Christmas, which is the sequel to When Carrot Met Cookie. And the other is Billy the Kid Comes Home for Christmas, which is a book I co-wrote with Dolly Parton, because I do a series of books with her.
With Dolly Parton!
Yeah, this is the second book in our series of books about Billy the Kid, who is a French Bulldog who plays music in Nashville.
I want to hear more about working with Dolly Parton!
Oh, I'd be happy to talk about all day about working with Dolly Parton. It's a pleasure. She is terrific. I actually am sitting at my desk and I'm looking at the letter that she wrote me, in thanks for the first book that we worked on together, which was Billy the Kid Makes It Big. We were paired together by our publisher, which is Penguin Random House. Most of what we do is just send things back and forth, but she's amazing. I'm a huge fan, and I was excited to get the opportunity to work with her. And we have one book out, and two books on the way. So the second book is the Christmas book, and then there's a third book in the works right now.
Well, I'm excited because now I'm two degrees of separation from Dolly Parton!
Yep!
Awesome. Joanne, what are you working on next?
I just finished edits on a book All the Things We Found, that comes out in fall of 2025, another middle grade. And I also have a wordless picture book on submission right now, inspired by the trip to Israel, called The Pigeon On the Wall. When we went to the Wall and I looked up, and there's a bunch of alcoves up there, and there's pigeons in them. And I thought, what the pigeon must see every day looking down at the people that come to the Wall. So it's a wordless picture book based on that experience.
A bucket list item for me as well, to write a wordless picture book as a non illustrating author.
That's what I'm wondering, like, how do you write a wordless picture book if you are not the illustrator?
It's basically, this is what happens in this spread, and that's what happens in that spread. Leaving lots of space for an illustrator, knowing that they're going to have to carry a lot of weight, of course, but it's just sort of what I envision for the, I guess the steps of the book, This happens, then that happens, then that happens. But it's nice because I don't have to worry about word choice. It was a lot of fun to write. So we'll see where that goes.
I forgot to mention a project so inspired by the trip to Israel. I co-wrote a middle grade novel with Stacia Deutsch, who is another PJ alum, and Nancy Werlin, who went when Joanne and I did, and it's a contemporary sci fi time travel. Three Jewish kids end up going back in time and meeting either Einstein or Maimonides or Esther. So that's on submission.
Like a Bill and Ted!
Yeah.
Oh, that's fun. I love time travel. For any of you, is there an interview question you never get asked that you would like to answer?
All right, I got one. A lot of people know that I post these pictures on my Instagram of banana peels, usually my foot next to them, and no one ever asked me where that came from. So if you'd like to ask, I can tell you.
Yes, why do you post pictures of banana peels?
So I post pictures of banana peels by my foot, because when my book All Three Stooges was coming out, it has a picture on the cover, drawn by Jordan Sondler, of a kid's shoe about to land on kind of a pile of bananas. And it's sort of supposed to give a little summary of the book's content, which is about comedy and tragedy. As that book was about to come out, I went for a walk one day, and I happened to see a banana peel on the ground. And I just thought it was funny, and I took a picture of my foot next to the banana peel. Since that day, almost every time I leave the house I see a banana peel on the ground. When I tell people this, they say, No, that can't be and then they start to see them too. So now that I've told you and all your listeners, everyone is going to start to see them. And so all I can say is, when you see them, take a picture, post it. Feel free to tag me, because I do enjoy seeing them. Lots of people now send them to me. And I think it's sort of like a way of the universe telling you that there's comedy everywhere. It always makes me laugh and makes me think, like, don't take yourself too seriously. Trip on a banana peel.
You know, on this subject, I feel like banana peels and quicksand were threats that in my childhood seems much worse than they proved to be in real life.
I like that hashtag you just put in the chat, Henry, #BananaAwareness.
My hashtag is #BananasOfMyRun, because oftentimes I'm going out for runs, but #BananaAwareness works too.
Awesome. That was great. Thank you for sharing that. I want to ask each of you, where can listeners learn more about your work?
My website is HenryHerz.com There's no T in my name.
H e r z.
Or zed if you're Canadian.
H e r zed.
And I'm at JoanneLevy.com and I sometimes use Instagram, but you can find that from my website
Okay, and Erica, you mentioned your Instagram. Tell us where we can find you.
So my website is EricaPerl.com and there's no A in my last name. People always want to give me extra vowels, but it's just P, E, R, L, and then my Instagram is also E R, I, C, A, P, E, R, L, that's where you'll find the banana peels.
All right, thank you. Henry Herz, Joanne Levy, Erica Perl, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and thank you for speaking with me.
Thank you. It was fun. You were fantastic. You did a great job.
Yes, this was wonderful. Thank you so much for having us. Happy Hanukkah!
Thoughtful as always. Thanks for having us, Heidi. Happy Hanukkah, everybody.
Thank you.
[MUSIC, DEDICATION] I'm Joni Sussman. I am the outgoing publisher at Kar-Ben Publishing. I will soon be on the Book of Life podcast, and I want to dedicate it to the Association of Jewish Libraries, which does wonderful things for kids.
I'm Fran Greenman-Schmitz, and I'm the incoming publisher at Kar-Ben Publishing.
[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!
