THE BOOK OF LIFE: 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Awards, Revealed!

11:58PM Jan 25, 2025

Speakers:

Heidi Rabinowitz

Sheryl Stahl

Aviva Rosenberg

A.R. Vishny

Keywords:

time loops

time travel

Sydney Taylor

Jewish children's books

Sephardic Jews

Holocaust memoir

graphic novel

Jewish fantasy

LGBTQ+ representation

media literacy

News Literacy Project

Association of Jewish Libraries

book awards

Jewish history

antisemitism

[COLD OPEN] There were at least half a dozen Jewish books published in 2024 that included time loops or time travel. This theme is really hot right now!

Yeah, so I was thinking about that. I wonder if maybe some of it's inspired by the TV show Russian Doll that has a Jewish main character. I wonder if that maybe like flipped a switch in some writers' minds.

[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly. I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. It's January, and that means it's book award season. The Sydney Taylor Book Awards are presented to the best Jewish children's and teen books by the Association of Jewish Libraries each year. They're sponsored by Jo Taylor Marshall, daughter of the author Sydney Taylor, who created the beloved All-of-a-Kind Family series. The All-of-a-Kind Family books were the first mainstream books with Jewish characters.

By the way, the Association of Jewish libraries is creating a Sydney Taylor portal on their website, and I will be sure to let you know when it's up and running.

The 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Award winners were announced at the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards press conference on January 27, 2025. Here is my exclusive interview with Aviva Rosenberg, Chair of this year's Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee. For a list of this year's winning books and links to more information about the award, visit BookOfLifePodcast.com. [END MUSIC]

Aviva Rosenberg, welcome to The Book of Life!

Hi! It's great to be back.

Great! Yes, it was wonderful to have you here last year to talk about the Sydney Taylor Book Award, and now we're back to talk about the winners of the 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Awards. So Aviva, when I wrote to you to set up this interview, I told you my guesses about what books would win the awards, and you wrote me back, "Ooh, prepare to be shocked!" And I was! So some of the winners are not the books that have been getting the most buzz out there. So with that spoiler, let's get to it and reveal the winners of the 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Awards.

We've got our three age group categories, picture book, middle grade, and young adult. So let's start with the gold medalists for all three categories, and then we'll move on to the Honors and the Notables. So what was the winner in the picture book category?

The winner in the picture book category is An Etrog from Across the Sea by Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky, illustrated by Stacey Dressen McQueen.

So this was my first shocker. My prediction was that Joyful Song by Lesléa Newman would win the gold... although I must say it's nice to give somebody else a chance, since Lesléa has already had like seven other books win the Sydney Taylor, whether gold or silver or notable; and illustrator Susan Gal has had three Sydney Taylor recognitions in the past!

An Etrog from Across the Sea has two co-authors, as you mentioned, it's got Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky. Deborah Bodin Cohen has had four Notables and two Honor books in the past. Her co-author, Kerry Olitzky... they've done a number of books together, but this is his first time receiving Sydney Taylor recognition, and it's also the first time for illustrator Stacy Dressen McQueen. So we've got some new blood! So tell us what this book is about and what were its particular strengths.

We as a group appreciated about An Etrog from Across the Sea that it's about a holiday that doesn't get a lot of attention. This book is about a pair of Sephardic Jewish children in New York, back when it was still a colony, before the Revolution. Their father is away on a merchant trading journey in the Mediterranean. He writes them a letter promising to bring back an etrog from the island of Corsica, which apparently was a hot spot for citron trees. But his ship doesn't come. You know, this is the 18th century. They had no way of knowing where he was or what had happened. Like, can you imagine people going off on a trip now for like, six months or more, and you have absolutely no way of knowing where they are? And I think that that's actually something that's really intriguing. It could be thought provoking for kids about this book.

They wait through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The grandfather gives one of the kids this beautiful silver and blue cup. It's meant to be like a fancy mustard holder, but it's, but their family uses it to hold their etrog, and the grandfather gives it to her as a promise: you're going to need this because your father is going to come and he is going to bring you that etrog. The cup becomes this symbol of hope and not giving up. Spoiler alert: he makes it home in time with an etrog from Corsica.

Phew! [LAUGHTER]

The illustrations are really unique. They're very clever and evocative of that early 18th century time period. They look almost like embroidery. As a history nerd, I have to say, it is very period accurate. There's one illustration where the mom's dress has a sack back, which, if you're at all of a history fashion nerd, that's like spot on. And facing that page, there's an illustration of the two children looking at each other that they look like miniature portraits. If you went into a museum with artifacts from this time period, you would see images that look almost exactly like that. So the level of detail, like the prints on their clothing and the carpets and things like that, is just absolutely fascinating, and really gives you this amazing sense of the time period.

Something that people don't necessarily realize is that the first Jews who settled in New York, the vast majority of them were Sephardic, they were of Spanish and Portuguese descent, who came to America from England, from the Netherlands, from the Caribbean. One thing that we appreciated about this book is that it's portrayed in a very subtle way through things like the names that the family has; and the sukkah that they build is decorated in a distinctly Spanish and Portuguese style. It's a strong tradition in that community to have all natural decorations, like fruit, to attach, like, bundles of leaves or foliage to the posts of the sukkah. So you have these subtle markers of what it means to be Sephardic without exoticizing or kind of tokenizing. It's really just woven beautifully into the story and the illustrations.

I believe in the end notes, it tells us that the silver cup that they used as their etrog holder is an actual artifact that is now in a museum. Is that right?

Yes, it does still exist. The grandfather in the story is a Sephardic merchant named Luis Moises Gomez, who was the first person assigned the right to conduct business and own property in the colonies without vowing allegiance to the Church of England. He was significant as a Jewish person in that way. There's a page that has an image of the Mill Street Synagogue, the first synagogue building in New York, that was built with the participation of the grandfather in the story. The family in this book is fictionalized, though; the children and the mother and I believe even the name of the father, who's off on the journey.

So this fictional story is based on the historical figure of Luis Moises Gomez, the Grandpapa in the story. It mentions in the end note that he was a slave owner. Was this a concern, as the committee considered this book for recognition?

It's definitely a fact that merchants and entrepreneurs and other people, including Jews, profited from the labor and the trafficking of enslaved Black people. And the authors did choose to acknowledge that in their end note, and we felt that that was an appropriate way to present that historical context for the audience of this picture book, alongside the more positive aspects of Luis Moises Gomez's legacy. And we appreciated that the authors presented this time period without superimposing modern standards on the story or, like, overcorrecting for it.

Let's move on. Tell us about the winner in the middle grade category.

The winner in the middle grade category is The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival, written by Estelle Nadel with Sammy Savos and Bethany Strout. It's a graphic novel. The illustrations are done by Sammy Savos.

Okay, so this was another shocker for me. My prediction was that it would be either Not Nothing by Gayle Forman or Max in the House of Spies by Adam Gidwitz. These are two excellent books that I loved enough to podcast about them in 2024, and they've both been getting a lot of buzz in the children's literature community. And I hadn't heard any buzz about The Girl Who Sang. So tell us about what made The Girl Who Sang stand out for the committee.

The Girl Who Sang is a really excellent, meaningful introduction to the Holocaust for its intended audience. It's very honest and it's very emotional, but it's not overwhelming. It's not going to give you nightmares, it's just going to make you feel deeply. One of the powerful things about this book is that it's about someone who's a real ordinary kid, and that kind of makes her story more relatable than books about kids who are extraordinary. Enia, which was Estelle's name when she was a kid, she's just cute! And Sammy and Bethany confirmed that that Estelle, which is the name she started using in America, they say that she was like, a really darling person. She did have a beautiful voice, like she performed in choirs and things. But in this book, the depictions of her early life are that she was a normal, Polish, Jewish kid with a normal, loving family. And then the arrival of the war was this very sharp break in that normalcy, especially for a young child who has a limited understanding of world events. The story goes from her enjoying holidays and sibling relationships and stuff... and there's this blank white panel with the words, "I thought we would be this happy forever." And then you turn the page, and there's this sudden, scary arrival of the war. Enia goes through one loss after another, parents and siblings and friends, but she just always manages to keep going. Through this book, you can experience Enia's charm and her fear and her confusion and her loss and perseverance during this constant change.

Sammy really worked hard with Estelle to create images that give you this sense of place that's based as much as possible on photographs of the actual locations in the book. And one of the strengths of the graphic format for telling this particular story is that you have those visuals, and you can put yourself into this village where most of it takes place. Estelle's memories were very, very clear, and they're backed up with information that was acquired after the war ended. And Bethany and Sammy both talked about how clearly Estelle remembered everything, and how hard they worked to bring that to life on the page, and they really, really succeeded.

So Estelle Nadel passed away in November 2023, which was just two months before this book was published. And we're, of course, thrilled to honor the book and give Bethany and Sammy their due with this middle grade gold. But it's really heartbreaking that we can't give Estelle herself the platform that she deserves, because by all accounts, she was a really remarkable woman, and she was an excellent speaker and singer. And she spoke widely about her experiences during the Holocaust, especially to kids, because she wanted people to understand that what happened to her was real.

Another thing that is a real strength of this book is that it gives you a really full depiction of her life after the war ended, because sometimes you can get the impression from the way some stories are told, that the war ended and it was over and everything was fine, and people went back to normal. But her life was still very complicated and difficult, and she kept having to start over. And I really think it's important for people to see that situation: somebody's life after traumatic events conclude isn't necessarily neat or perfect. I really can't recommend this book enough, both for people who are familiar with Holocaust stories, and for people to whom this would be an introduction.

Excellent. Okay, tell us about the winner in the young adult category.

The winner in the young adult category is Night Owls by A.R. Vishny. It's the story of two estries, which are bread eating, owl shifting, lady vampires from Jewish lore. So these two girls, Molly and Clara, live in this indie cinema in New York City that used to be a Yiddish theater. The older sister, Clara, has this rule against falling in love, because they need to protect themselves. They need to keep their secret about who and what they really are. But her younger sister, Molly, ignores it and falls in love with a college student named Anat. And then Anat vanishes, and the sisters have to find her. So they team up with their box office attendant, a Mizrahi Jew named Boaz. He's a medium, he can see and speak to ghosts. And then they go down this very long and complicated path of this demonic underworld of New York in order to rescue Anat, and save the world that they've built for themselves.

This was my one correct prediction, and I'm absolutely thrilled to see this debut novel win the gold. I loved it so much! I've already got the author scheduled to appear on The Book of Life Podcast in the coming months. Tell us about what made Night Owls rise to the top for the awards committee.

Night Owls goes so far into creating a world and creating the people who live in it. This ghostly and demonic underworld that she's created are just so thorough. She brings in so many pieces about cinema history, about New York City, about, you know, where these girls came from, when they became estries. We talked a lot about world building for the different books that we read this year. And this was the one that everybody said, "THIS is world building." This is a masterful job of creating a fantasy grounded in reality, actual New York City and actual Jewish history and actual theater history. It just felt so real and plausible, which is really hard to do.

All right, excellent. In addition to the three gold medalists, there are also nine silver medalists known as Sydney Taylor Honor Books, and eight Notable Books selected by the committee across the three age categories. So let's talk about the Honor Books and the Notable Books. So just briefly tell us what was special about each of these books. So let's start with the list of picture books.

The Honor Books in the picture book category: The first one is Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan's Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants by Norman H. Finkelstein, illustrated by Vesper Stamper. And this is about the man who started the Yiddish language newspaper, The Forward. The Forverts helped Jewish immigrants navigate life in a new place. He helped people learn about things like how to vote, gave them opportunities to write letters to get advice. He was really this voice for immigrants and this source of support and care for people who really needed it. The illustrations in this book are very charming, lots of interesting details. As far as I could tell, all the Yiddish on the page is legit, which is an accomplishment. Really did a good job.

The author of Amazing Abe was Norman Finkelstein, and unfortunately, he died in January 2024, so this award is posthumous. He's had five books named as Sydney Taylor Notables in the past, but this one is an Honor Book. So it's sad that he's missing getting to receive that recognition.

It really is. I'm glad that we're able to honor his legacy, though, because he deserves it.

Yeah. Okay, what is the next Honor Book?

The next Honor Book is Joyful Song: A Naming Story by Lesléa Newman, illustrated by Susan Gal. This is a story of a little boy named Zachary who is going with his mothers to bring his new baby sister to synagogue to be named. As they're walking down the street with the baby in the stroller, they run into all these neighbors who ask what her name is. His mothers remind him that we're not saying the baby's name yet. They provide all these adorable nicknames that convey how much they love her and how sweet she is. Zachary invites all the neighbors to join them in their synagogue. You have these beautiful, colorful, warm illustrations that really convey this excitement and joy over the birth of a new baby and how special that is, not just for the family, but for the entire community. I love that it's giving you an understanding of this Jewish custom. Really a satisfying book.

Yes, definitely deserves this recognition. It is a feast for the eyes.

The next Honor Book is Rising by Sidura Ludwig, illustrated by Sophia Vincent Guy. It's about a child and their mother getting up early and going through the steps of making challah for Shabbat. It's more about the process than about the actual product. And you have all these beautiful pictures with textile and different textured elements to them. This beautiful, quiet, lush world in the kitchen, braiding the challah until it's ready, it's baked, and they sit down and have a Shabbat meal. The language is just very quiet and lyrical, and conveys a sense of peace that you bring into Shabbat and then you get from Shabbat. This was really one of my personal favorites. It's just sweet and warm and cozy and comfortable.

I thought Rising did a beautiful job of exploring the metaphor of rising and growth. And I also really liked it that the child is portrayed in a gender non-specific way. You could really read whatever you wanted onto them. So that was sort of a plus as well.

Our final picture book Honor is The Tree of Life: How a Holocaust Sapling Inspired the World, written by Elisa Boxer and illustrated by Alianna Rozentsveig, the story of a sapling that was planted in the Theiresenstadt concentration camp. Theiresenstadt was an unusual kind of concentration camp set up as this model, like fake village that people could come and the Nazis could be like, "Oh, things are fine. The Jews are just hanging out here until we're done with the war or whatever," but they were still suffering. So you had a school in this camp. You had children, which was not a super common thing in concentration camps. The teacher arranged for somebody to bring a sapling to this very barren landscape that the children in the school nurtured and cared for because they needed something to work towards. They needed something to cultivate. The tree was a source of inspiration and hope for all of these kids. When the war was over, people took cuttings from this tree and planted them all over the world. The tree itself lost its last leaf in 2007. It has 600 descendants all around the world. And it's really just a powerful symbol of not giving up, and of how life and beautiful things grow, even in difficult circumstances.

And it's a true story.

Yes, you can visit its descendants in New York City and in Chicago and all kinds of places.

Let's hear about the picture book Notables.

Everybody's Book: The Story of the Sarajevo Haggada by Linda Leopold Strauss... this is a bit of a kid version of People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. The Sarajevo Haggadah was a very unusual and beautiful and elaborate book created as a wedding present for a couple in Spain in 1350. One hundred something years after that, the Inquisition happened, and people had to flee Spain, and they were able to take the Haggadah with them. It traveled to Italy and then to Bosnia, where it ended up in Sarajevo, which is the capital of what was at one point Yugoslavia, now it's Bosnia and Herzegovina. So it ended up under the care of the curators of a museum in Bosnia. Sarajevo is this very multi-ethnic city, you have Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, like, people who are different kinds of Christian, who are Muslim, who are Jewish. And all of these people ultimately came together to save this beautiful Jewish work of art and ritual from the Nazis, and it was hidden away in a mosque during the War. And then during the war in Yugoslavia in 1991, the Haggadah was again in danger. And again, you know, a Muslim professor ran to rescue this book while the city was being bombed around him. The Haggadah is just this really strong symbol of multiculturalism and of support and of people caring for and respecting history.

And so this is another true story.

Yes.

I did want to mention that way, way back in April 2008 I actually interviewed Geraldine Brooks about People of the Book.

Yeah, I'll have to go back and listen to that one.

What's the next book?

Mr. Katz and Me by Marc Kornblatt, illustrated by Nanette Regan. And this is the story of a girl whose father is a bar mitzvah teacher. He teaches people to read from the Torah. And one day this elderly man comes along for Bar Mitzvah lessons, and she's like, "What is going on?" But she comes to see this man as a friend, and she appreciates why he's doing what he's doing. He's a Soviet immigrant who wasn't allowed to learn Jewish things when he was a kid, and at this late stage of his life, he's picking up the pieces and learns to read the Torah and have a Bar Mitzvah for himself. And it's just a very sweet story of an intergenerational friendship.

That's sweet. I think it would make a good companion to a book from 2014, Bubbe's Belated Bat Mitzvah by Isabel Pinson, which is, you know, a great grandmother having her bat mitzvah. What is the next Notable Book?

The final picture book Notable is Sharing Shalom by Danielle Sharkan, illustrated by Selina Alko. It's a story about a girl who loves going to Hebrew school. She loves learning, and she's so proud of who she is. But then her synagogue is vandalized. Her mother explains that some people think we're different and they don't like that, and that's why this happened. And that starts her thinking that she shouldn't be so different. She needs to braid down her curly hair and hide away her star of David. But she comes back to her synagogue and sees people from all over their community helping to clean it up and repair and rebuild, and she remembers that being different is something special. I think this is a great way of helping kids understand how antisemitism can affect them, but that it shouldn't dim their light, and it shouldn't diminish their Jewish pride.

Yeah, I loved this book. I especially liked how Leila's love of her Jewish identity and heritage is really firmly established at the opening of the story, so that readers then understand what is being threatened by the antisemitism. And I think that that aspect is not always covered in these types of stories.

Yeah, I love how engaged she was in her world as a Jewish person.

Let's talk about the Honor Books and Notable Books in the middle grade category.

Our first middle grade Honor is Across So Many Seas by Ruth Behar. This is a multi- generational saga of four girls of one Jewish family. It starts out in Spain in 1492 when Benvenida's family escapes from the Inquisition across the Mediterranean to Turkey. The next segment takes place in Turkey in the 1920s where Benvenida's descendant, Reina, her father gets upset at her for pushing boundaries, and ships her off to Cuba. The third segment takes place in Cuba in 1961 where Reina's daughter, Alegra, is very excited to be joining the Communist revolution and to go out into the country and teach people how to read and write. But Castro cracks down on businesses, and a lot of Jewish families had to leave because, you know, they were capitalists. So Alegra has to give up this revolution that she's been working for and travel to Florida, where the final segment of the story takes place in Miami, 2003 and Alegra's daughter, Paloma, has been learning about their family history. And they go off on a trip to Spain to see the place where their family came from back in the day, and they make some surprising and very special discoveries.

I'm happy that this book got an Honor. I loved this story because I thought that this exploration of Sephardic history was just so well done.

Reading a book like this makes it very real.

So the next middle grade Honor Book is Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop by Joshua S. Levy, which is the story of two boys: Finn, who is an only child, not Orthodox, having his bar mitzvah; Ezra, an Orthodox boy, got a whole bunch of siblings, having his bar mitzvah. And they both get stuck in a time loop, reliving these bar mitzvahs over and over and over again. Eventually they run into each other and start working together to get themselves out of it. In classic Josh Levy style, there are a lot of hijinks, zany drama. It's a really fun book, but it's also thought provoking. I think the Jewish value that this book conveys is, if you've ever heard the expression "Eizehu ashir? Hasameach b'chelko" - "Who is wealthy? The one who's happy with what he has." That's the ultimate lesson that comes through this book. But it's fun. It's not hitting you over the head.

No, it was very enjoyable and entertaining. And I love that he's showing the diversity within Judaism, how there are so many ways to be Jewish. And there were at least half a dozen Jewish books published in 2024 that included time loops or time travel! I think this is definitely one of the most fun and creative from among those books, but this theme is really hot right now!

Yeah, so I was thinking about that because it was definitely noticeable. I wonder if maybe some of it's inspired by the TV show Russian Doll that has a Jewish main character. I wonder if that maybe like, flipped a switch in some writers' minds.

What's the next Honor Book?

Okay, the next Honor Book is Just Shy of Ordinary by A.J. Sass. It's the story of a nonbinary kid named Shai. Shai, for various reasons, develops an upsetting habit of picking at the hair on their arms. And to try and cure themselves of this problem, they need to make a dramatic change in their life in order to disrupt it, which in this case means switching from homeschooling to going to public school. But ultimately, Shai has to learn that problems can't be solved by flipping a switch, you need to address what's underneath it. And then a school project leads to them delving deeper into their Jewish heritage. Shai's mother walked away from that life and decided to raise her kid to be able to choose for themselves what they wanted to be. And then Shai is kind of learning it from scratch at the age of, I think, 12 or 13. And I think that was one of the strengths of this book. It gives you this very unique perspective of what it's like to learn about being Jewish. I thought that was a really interesting exploration. What happens when you raise a kid without a specific cultural heritage, and how do they fill that void?

In the middle grade Notable category this year we have Benji Zeb Is a Ravenous Werewolf by Deke Moulton, who got an Honor last year for Don't Want To Be Your Monster. A really clever story about a boy named Benji Zeb who is a werewolf - spoiler, sorry! He lives on a sort of kibbutz in Washington State populated by Jewish werewolves, presented to the world as being a wolf sanctuary. Benji is full of anxiety about his upcoming bar mitzvah. He's got a crush on his classmate Caleb, who's pretty obnoxious to him. This classmate's stepfather happens to be a rancher who really wants to shut down the wolf sanctuary. One night, Caleb turns up at the kibbutz, and it turns out he's a werewolf too, and Benji has to teach Caleb about how to be a werewolf, how to stay safe. Caleb has Chinese heritage, and Benji learns a lot about how that can be similar and different to being Jewish, to, you know, to be a minority in a place like the Pacific Northwest.

I loved Benji Zeb, I thought that book was awesome, so I'm happy that it got this recognition. What is the next book?

The next book that got a Notable for middle grade is Max in the House of Spies: A Tale of World War II by Adam Gidwitz, the story of a boy who is sent on a kindertransport from Germany to London. He's taken in by this wealthy Jewish family, which gives me like very Downton Abbey vibes. And he has these two unexpected traveling companions on his shoulders, a creature called a kobold and a dybbuk, who are kind of the Statler and Waldorf on his shoulders through his entire journey in England. The family that he's taken in by turns out to be a whole bunch of spies, and he ends up in a sort of spy training program. He sets himself the goal of learning everything that he needs to know so that he can eventually go back to Germany and rescue his own parents. This book is extremely kid-friendly: adventure, you know, Spy Kids. There's humor, there's drama, there's thoughtfulness, there's lessons that you can learn. It's a very exciting, fast paced action packed story that I could see a lot of kids really, really liking.

Well, as I mentioned, Max in the House of Spies was one of the books that I predicted might win gold, and I've already read the sequel, Max in the Land of Lies, and I think it's even better...

Oh, that's exciting!

...than the first book!

Can't wait now!

Yeah, the second book especially, really makes the rise of fascism understandable in a way that is very rare in children's literature. All right, did we have any more middle grade books?

We have one more middle grade book, Things That Shimmer by Deborah Lakritz. The main character, Melanie, her mother is suffering from PTSD from a car accident. Really wants to be accepted by this popular group of girls. But a new classmate, Dorit, moves to town. Dorit is Israeli, and her father is also suffering from PTSD related to service in the Israeli army during war. They really develop this very special friendship. But Melanie just cannot shake this desire to be one of the cool kids. She makes some really dumb decisions and blows off Dorit. The idea of being accepted by the cool kids seems to her this source of stability and friends. She has to learn that that kind of friendship isn't what she needs, and that people like Dorit are the ones who really are going to be there for her when she needs them.

This book takes place in 1973 and the Yom Kippur War in Israel is a significant part of the storyline. We don't get a lot of books that have anything to do with Israel, and I really appreciated that this gave a perspective on what it was like for American Jews, thinking about Israel and hearing about the things that were happening there, and having to think about what it meant for them. One other thing I love about this book: it's set in a Midwest town where it's kind of a majority Jewish neighborhood. It seems like everybody in Melanie's class is having a bar or bat mitzvah. We see a lot of books where somebody is the only Jew in town, but the reality for a lot of American Jews is that they grew up in a neighborhood like this.

Interesting. I hadn't thought about that aspect, but, yeah, I also grew up in a neighborhood where there were bar and bat mitzvahs, you know, every weekend.

Right.

Finally, tell us about the Honor Books and Notable Books in the young adult category.

In the young adult category, we have two Honor Books. The first is The Forbidden Book by Sacha Lamb, who won for When the Angels Left the Old Country in the recent past. A 17 year old girl named Sorel who leaps from a window the night before her wedding, grabs some men's clothes and takes on the identity of a guy named Isser Jacobs. But then it turns out that she's possessed by him and that he's a revolutionary that people are hunting down. Sorel is drawn into this underworld, smugglers and criminals and revolutionaries. And then, of course, there's a supernatural twist with a dybbuk and with demons and so on. Sorel is a girl possessed by this male dybbuk, and it's clear that her identity is complicated. This book is set in a shtetl, and it has this really excellent, strong sense of place and time, a lot of humor, snappy discourse, a lot of drama and high stakes.

Well, I'm very happy to see Sacha Lamb continuing to create really heavy duty Jewish fantasy with a lot of fascinating gender exploration.

Sacha really knows what they're doing!

Absolutely! All right, what else?

Our second young adult Honor Book is Trajectory by Cambria Gordon. A 17 year old girl named Eleanor Schiff who lives in Philadelphia. She's very shy. She's a math genius, but she is hiding that because her father, who is also a math genius, suffered, I think it was a stroke. Lost a lot of his ability to function, and she's concerned that it's her fault. So she doesn't like displaying her math ability, she really wants to fly under the radar. But World War II is happening; she has relatives in the old country that she's worried about, a cousin her own age. And the opportunity presents itself for her to join a group of math geniuses working to compute angles and information to assist bombers with their accuracy. She has to learn a lot about what it means to be brave.

I'm not a math person, but the math in this book is actually presented in a very accessible way, just this very exciting, dramatic story. There's this thread of what it's like to be a Jew in America during the war, feel like you're the only one who cares about what's going on in Europe, or the only one who really wants to know.

It sounds like a Jewish Hidden Figures.

Yes, it's definitely comparable to Hidden Figures, Enigma Girls, that kind of thing.

Very cool. Okay, what's the next book?

So we have two Notables in the young adult category. The first one is The Ballerina of Auschwitz by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, which is the young adult edition of The Choice. Edith, who's a dancer and a gymnast hoping to make the Olympics, then the war hits, she ends up in Auschwitz. She doesn't shy away from telling some graphic and disturbing details, but this is a young adult book that was edited from an adult book, and so it is appropriate. Literarily well written and interesting book.

It sounds very interesting. On the publisher's website, it says that the author is one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors who's old enough to remember life in the camps.

What was the last book of all?

Inkflower by Suzy Zail. And it's the story of a teenage girl living in Australia whose father develops ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, which is this terrible neurodegenerative disease that affects your brain and spinal cord. It just shuts people down. And her father knows that he doesn't have a lot of time left, and so he sits his family down and tells them the story of his life during the Holocaust and how he ended up in Australia. And this is the first time that Lisa and her brothers are hearing about it. A huge shock for Lisa, because she didn't know this about her father, she didn't know she was Jewish, and she has to come to terms with that on top of the fact that her father is dying.

Inkflower takes place in Australia. The author is Australian. This may be the first Jewish children's novel with an Australian setting since Hitler's Daughter by Jackie French, which was published in 1999. And that's also a Holocaust book, so neither of them actually have a purely Australian setting, because they're also talking about the war in Europe. Can you talk more about the Australian-ness of Inkflower? Does it give you a good sense of place, or of Australian culture?

How the father ended up in Australia, like the journey that he made there, is an interesting feature of the book. And there's just a lot of other small details that give you a sense of place. I mean, there are certain words that she uses, like pram instead of stroller, a reference to Vegemite sandwiches, things like that.

More often than not, there's at least one Holocaust book among the three gold medalists in any given year, and that happened again this year. Out of the twenty books being recognized, six are related to the Holocaust. There's one in the picture book category, two in the middle grade category, and three in the young adult category. So that means 30% of this year's Sydney Taylor books are Holocaust related, and that's the same percentage as last year. So can you talk about why Jewish children's literature is so dominated by the Holocaust, and do you feel that this is a problem?

So I think, in general, a lot of what we call diverse kidlit ends up being focused on a tragedy or a trauma of some kind, which is a problem in some ways. Because, you know, we talk also a lot about how we want people to see Jewish joy, and I'm sure that goes for other minorities who don't want only their trauma to be portrayed in books. I don't remember the first time I learned what the Holocaust was. It feels like I always knew, and I think that's true for a lot of Jewish people, but other people learn about it through these books. And what we want is for people to have the best quality books to learn about the Holocaust. We want people to get the most accurate and meaningful understanding of what the Holocaust was, and so we want to elevate them.

Right. Well, many of the Holocaust books are extremely well written because it's very compelling material, so they end up winning awards because they're so well done. The problem is not with the books themselves. The problem is just that the balance is off, that so many books are about this one subject.

Right. I mean, there's also just a lot of source material that's relatively easy to find. The information about it is accessible, and I think that's also maybe driving some of it.

So this is a particularly strong year for LGBTQ+ representation across all the age categories, and they're all excellent books. And it's nice to see that the committee is not self censoring through fear of book bans. Can you talk about this aspect of this year's winners?

First off, I'll say that a good book is a good book. That's what rises to the top in this kind of conversation. If it happens to be that it's LGBTQ+, then that's going to get the attention it deserves. We have a picture book, we have middle grade, we have a young adult that all have an aspect of queer identity in them that's presented in very age appropriate ways.

Like, Joyful Song treats the fact that there are two moms as a matter of course, it's not explaining "Oh, Zachary Has Two Mommies," like, they're there, and that's how it is. And I think that's actually a really beneficial presentation for younger readers. Hopefully that will put parents at ease that, like, it doesn't have to be a big drama.

What I like about Just Shy is that Shai has already come out. They know their identity, but there are still day to day questions that arise from that. Like, even when you're confident about how you see yourself, you might still run into things that you have to figure out. And I think that was a really good treatment of that for middle graders.

And yeah, and also we had Benji Zeb, who's this very Jewishly involved boy who's gay, having a crush on somebody who comes from a homophobic family life. That's probably a little extra painful, but the way Benji and Caleb come around to understanding each other is very satisfying.

And then The Forbidden Book, Sacha gave you all these pieces of information about Sorel and what Sorel wanted to be, or Sorel was trying to figure out about herself, about theirself, without making it feel inaccurate for the time period, like it didn't shake you out of the setting. I love seeing all these diverse characters and scenarios. All these authors make them make sense in ways that are worthwhile and also just enjoyable to read,

Excellent. With the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza, there's more need than ever for books about Israel. Were there any Israel related books that you saw this year that you think are worth mentioning, even though they didn't receive official Sydney Taylor recognition?

So I'll point out Things That Shimmer, because I think that handled an Israeli character and the Yom Kippur War in a really high quality manner. Night Owls also: Boaz, who's the main supporting character, is Israeli. He speaks Hebrew, he's got Israeli family, and that comes through strongly in the story.

My personal favorite this year for books that are set in Israel was The Treasure of Tel Maresha by Tammar Stein, which has this dual present / historical storyline set at what is now an archeological site that was a settlement in ancient times of both Jews and Edomites. I did a summer at an archeological dig once, and archeology is just a huge part of Israel's identity and what people do or see when they come to visit Israel. So I thought having a book that focused on that was really well done. The historical chapters really bring the period to life. I would love to see more books that explore Israel and its history from an archeology angle, because there's so much material. Like, you can't walk around Israel without stumbling over an archeological site. And also, there's a lot of discourse about the history of Israel and the people of Israel, and I think it's worthwhile for people to pay some attention to this historical record that you can see and touch with your own hands; how a lot of people have lived there, but among the many people who have lived in that area, there have been Jewish people there for thousands of years. Oh, and bonus points for that being an early chapter book!

Yes, I also really enjoyed that book. And I'm going to shout out A Feather, a Pebble, a Shell, by Miri Leshem-Pelly, who I am going to have on the show sometime within the coming months. That was a beautiful picture book that really focused on the natural history, the landscape of the land of Israel.

Yeah, I did like that one.

It's Tikkun Olam Time. What action would you like to call listeners to take to help heal the world?

As a librarian, I would like to encourage people to stay up on your media literacy skills. Pay attention to the kinds of resources that you use for information, about Judaism, about Israel, about news and so on. There's just so much propaganda and hyperbole and incorrectness being thrown around in the world that it's really important to pay attention and to make sure that you're really learning things and not just reacting to them. I recommend the News Literacy Project, which is @NewsLitProject on Instagram, it's like an organization that is really about teaching news literacy for kids. Their social media posts can help you get some perspective on how to assess the information that comes your way. And I think commitment to truth is definitely a Jewish value.

That is excellent advice, and very timely too. Thank you.

If listeners want to find out more about the Sydney Taylor Book Award, or to get the list of winners, a list that they can easily print out and take with them to go order books or go to the bookstore or go to the library, where can they find that information?

You can find that information on the Association of Jewish Libraries website, which is JewishLibraries.org. You'll see at the top, a tab that says Awards. If you hover over that, the first thing is Sydney Taylor Book Award.

And you can actually use a shortcut to get to that section of the website. This is like the secret menu. You can go to SydneyTaylorBookAwardS (plural) dot org, and that'll take you straight to the Sydney Taylor section of the AJL website.

And you can also check out @JewishLibraries on social media.

@JewishLibraries on all the socials.

Right.

In the past several years, the winning authors and illustrators have been part of a Sydney Taylor Book Award blog tour, basically a virtual book tour. Will that be happening again this year?

We are planning the blog tour right now. It'll be in early February, and we're also hoping to kind of expand more into some social media with BookTok and Bookstagrammers, to widen the audience for these books as much as possible.

Is there anything else that you want to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you?

I would like to thank the committee members who made this year's deliberation so enjoyable and satisfying and exciting. Cheryl Fox Strasberg, Melanie Koss, Eytan Kessler, Annette Goldsmith, Nat Bension, Rachel Simon, and also our advisor, past chair Martha Simpson. We had a really great team this year, people who had a lot of knowledge.

All right. Yes, thank you very much to the committee, and thank you again to Jo Taylor Marshall for sponsoring the award.

Yes, thank you, Jo!

Yeah! And to the Association of Jewish Libraries for providing the structure to make this all possible.

Yes, Association of Jewish Libraries is a very good cause, if you've got money lying around. [LAUGHTER]

[LAUGHTER] Aviva Rosenberg, thanks again.

Thank you!

[MUSIC, DEDICATION] Hi. This is A.R. Vishny, and I'm in the author of Night Owls. I'll be joining you soon on The Book of Life podcast. I'd like to dedicate my episode to Jewish Bookstagram. I am so grateful for the support from online Jewish communities at large, and particularly these accounts over there on Instagram have done such a wonderful job at creating a fun and welcoming space for Jewish readers and writers online.

[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473, or bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com. Subscribe to my newsletter on Substack to join me in growing Jewish joy and shrinking antisemitic hate. Get show notes, transcripts, Jewish kidlit news, and occasional calls to action right in your inbox. Sign up for the newsletter at BookOfLifePodcast.substack.com. You can also find The Book of Life on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Want to read the books featured on the show? Buy them through bookshop.org/shop/bookoflife to support the podcast and independent bookstores at the same time. You can also help us out by becoming a monthly supporter through Patreon or making a one time donation to our home library, the Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel of Boca Raton, Florida. You'll find links for all of that and more at BookOfLifePodcast.com. Additional support comes from the Association of Jewish Libraries, the leading authority on Judaic librarianship, which also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. Learn more about AJL at JewishLibraries.org. Our background music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening and happy reading.

[MUSIC, PROMO] After her town is carpeted with antisemitic leaflets, ceramic artist Faye finds refuge in her studio and before she knows it, her hands have created the figure of a man. She enscribes all her wishes into the clay and buries it under her rose bushes. The next day she literally runs into a handsome stranger, knocking him unconscious and giving him amnesia. As she gets to know him, he seems more and more like the man of her dreams. But is he just too good to be true? Or could he be a golem that she created and who just might become dangerous? Join me for a conversation with Jean Meltzer about her romantic comedy, Magical Meet Cute. Find us at JewishLibraries.org/NiceJewishBooks.