[COLD OPEN] I felt for a long time like I had to constantly apologize. People'd be like, Oh, what's your book about? I'll buy it! and I'd be like, Well, it's kind of a downer and then I stopped apologizing.
Yeah, I had that experience. I was at the dentist one time laying down with my mouth open and they're like, Oh, you're writing a book? What's it about? And I was like "losing my mom when I was a teenager," and then they had to continue scraping my teeth for like 45 minutes. So awkward.
[INTRO, MUSIC] This is The Book of Life a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly, I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. Today I've got a group interview for you with three authors, whose books each take a different and fascinating angle on dealing with grief. We'll meet Tyler Feder, author of the Sydney Taylor Book Award winning graphic memoir for young adults Dancing at the Pity Party; middle grade novelist Emily Barth Isler will tell us about her debut book called Aftermath; and we'll hear from returning guest Joanne Levy, who was on the show in October 2020 to talk about Fish Out of Water. Today she's back with her new middle grade novel Sorry For Your Loss. Alright, let's hear from Tyler, Emily and Joanne.
Welcome to The Book of Life, Emily Barth Isler Joanne Levy and Tyler Feder! Glad to have you all here.
Thank you so much for having us. Happy to be here.
This is so exciting. Yay, Heidi!
Yeah!
Okay, so I want to ask each of you to tell me about your book, and what inspired you to write it, just briefly. Let's start with Tyler.
Sure. Hi, everybody. My book is called Dancing at the Pity Party. And it is a graphic memoir, which is like a graphic novel but nonfiction, and it tells the story of my mom getting diagnosed with cancer and dying when I was 19. I was a sophomore in college, and sort of the whole thing, the ups and the downs and what it was like when she was sick and when she died, and the funeral and Shiva and everything afterwards.
Thank you. And Joanne, tell us about your book.
Sure. I'm Joanne Levy. And my book is Sorry For Your Loss. And it's actually set in a Jewish funeral home and it's inspired in a big part by the one that my dad manages in my hometown. Part of the inspiration for writing it was losing my mom. So Tyler and I are in the same club, unfortunately. Sorry, Tyler.
Sorry to you too.
It's a weird club to belong to. So yeah. And And the weird thing about this book is that I wouldn't have written it if it wasn't for losing my mom. So thanks, Mom. Anyway, that's my book in a nutshell.
Okay, thank you. And Emily?
I am Emily Barth Isler. My book is called Aftermath, and it's a middle grade novel about a young girl named Lucy who, following the loss of her younger brother from a heart defect, moves with her parents to a new town and finds that she's starting school where her classmates have all survived a school shooting that happened four years prior. How she deals with not fitting in, in a very unique way, and also finding herself in the face of grief and loss and finding her resilience. And there's a lot of math in it. She's a math whiz. And there's a mime class, and a lot of ways that people find healing.
So speaking of healing, I got the sense reading these books that writing them must have been healing in some way. So can any or all of you talk about how it may have been healing to write the book?
This is Emily again. I think for me, I did not realize the ways in which this book was going to be healing for me because I did not realize how much I had in common with some of the characters. I'm guessing it's probably different from both Tyler and Joanne's experiences. As you both have mentioned, they stemmed from a personal loss. And I'm sorry to you both. And I'm lucky and grateful to not be a member of that club and have not lost a close family member of mine. I wrote Aftermath much more out of a form of activism, of wanting to talk about hard things with kids. I'm a mom, I have two kids. The gun violence epidemic in America is something I'm pretty involved in as an activist and my family has always been involved in for many generations. But what I didn't really realize going into it and found really interesting is how it became therapeutic for me. There was more healing from my own previous traumas than I realized was going to be part of the book the way that some of the characters dealt with grief. For example, when Lucy meets some of the kids at her new school, they're very open and vocal about their experiences with the school shooting and where they were and how it affected them. And I didn't realize while writing it, how much of that was based on my personal experience after I suffered a traumatic violent attack when I was 17, and for a couple of years, really buried it and didn't talk about it or think about it. And when I finally started getting help for it, and within therapy, started talking about it, it's almost as if I couldn't stop talking about it. For a couple of years, I would introduce myself to people for the first time and say, Hey, I'm Emily, let me tell you this crazy thing that happened to me! It was just this very completely unconscious way of processing it. And I didn't put that together, actually, until editors started asking about where that trauma response came from. Because it's not the way everybody responds to trauma, certainly. So people started asking questions, you know, where did I get that idea? And what kind of research did I do and I realized the book was so much more personal to me than I originally thought.
For me, it was almost kind of the opposite, in that the light bulb moment that I had, that made me feel like I absolutely had to write it was after my mom died. Originally, this book was supposed to be something completely different. It was supposed to be a companion novel to my debut. Small Medium at Large is about a girl who's hit by lightning and can then hear ghosts. So there's death all around her. But it's just a fluffy, fun book that really isn't about grief at all. So I was going to write a companion novel. And it was going to be about a boy who works in his family funeral home and he deals with ghosts all the time, and it was supposed to be funny and frothy. And so I went with my dad to his funeral home and did the tour and saw the tahara room and all that stuff. But the tone wasn't working, like I just couldn't bring myself to make a madcap comedy out of grief. And it just didn't work. And I felt like if I was making something ridiculous, it would be diminishing grief. And I just didn't want to do that to kids. So I put it on the backburner. And then when my mom died, and we went to the funeral home with her, and we all went in the Tahara room, because it's my dad's funeral home. And I looked around, and I thought, You know what, I feel comforted knowing what's going to happen to her. I feel better, having seen inside these cabinets and knowing the respect that she'd be treated with and what happened to bodies. And I thought, you know, there's not a lot of people that see that behind the scenes stuff. But I know that kids are curious. So that was one of my big inspirations for writing it. And it was great at the time. But now that the books coming out, and I'm reading it, it's like a gut punch every time. Tyler, I don't know if it's like that for you. But it's like, you know, I do a reading and my mom... I mean, obviously, she never read this book, but she's on every page, you know, and it's, it's so much about my dad and her and their 50 plus year marriage and what brought them to both work in this funeral home. And it's hard. It's really hard. So well, I was sort of comforted in the reason why I wrote it and want to comfort others. Now it's like I'm peeling off my skin every time I read a bit of it. So it's kind of it feels backwards. Tyler, is that your experience?
I can understand that. For me. I wrote my book 10 years after my mom died. So it wasn't super fresh. And I kind of ended up treating the project almost as like an investigative journalism thing. I was like digging through old photos and letters my mom wrote me when I was at camp as a kid and birthday cards and asking my family members, like, all kinds of probing questions that they really resented. But uh, I think for me, the process almost like, desensitized me to her death, not in like a callous way. But more just like in that familiarity way. I just, I was like, really diving into it every single day all day for like a year. And it's impossible to be at max level grief for that long. So for me now, when I talk about it, it's like, oh, yeah, we're at the hospital. And like, I mean, of course, I still have days and weeks where I like go off the deep end and I'm really mourning. My grandma died a few months ago and she was in her 90s and she was totally happy with her life. and it was a completely different kind of loss from my mom, but it stirred up all these new, new old new feelings of grief and kind of like, brought it all up again. So it's really different day to day. But I did find the process of working on the book very cathartic and positive in general.
So there are various causes of death represented in your three books, illness, accident, gun violence. Does the cause of death affect the grief that comes after?
I think that's something that I explored a lot in Aftermath and why I was curious to write it. It was kind of the question of does it matter how you lose somebody, and certainly the main character in Aftermath, Lucy, feels like it matters a lot. She's a math whiz and she thinks of everything in terms of mathematics. So she enters this situation, really comparing and measuring grief. You know, her brother was five when he died, they knew most of his life that he was sick, and that he was not going to live very long. So she feels like because he was sick, and she got a chance to say goodbye and they saw it coming and it was a long process, that her grief is different from that of her classmates' friends, who died so suddenly, so violently. I liked looking at that through the lens of math, the idea of putting those kinds of grief on different planes, they're in different equations that cannot be compared. It took Lucy in the book a long time to come to that. We can't measure it, we can't judge it, we can only honor it and we can have compassion for other people. I know it can be very hard sometimes when somebody is going through something very difficult, and somebody else tries to relate, you know, whether it's trying to compare death to divorce, or trying to compare the loss of a person to a loss of a pet. I know, Tyler, I liked how in your book, there was a mention of that. And it's something I spent a lot of time thinking about. This concept for me came from the personal experience of, I lost my grandfather before I was born, and spent a lot of my childhood feeling like maybe I didn't deserve to feel that loss because I never knew him. So was I entitled to any grief? And I felt a tremendous amount of grief at not ever getting to know the person he was, and my cousins knew him and my sister got to meet him I was the only grandchild who didn't get to meet him. And I felt really acutely that I had missed out on something. But I would never admit that to anybody. I had friends who had beloved relationships with grandparents who they then subsequently lost. And I felt embarrassed to even admit that I thought of my grief as remotely in the same stratosphere. So I do think that it's human nature to sort of compare grief. I think all three of our books, I love them all together, because they all seek to normalize and destigmatize different parts of the grieving and loss process.
And just to add to that, like in my book, Evie struggles with her personal grief that she dismisses because she knows that Oren has had such a tragic loss of both of his parents, and it doesn't compare in her mind. If you don't think it's big enough.... but if it's bothering you, it's big enough and that matters. Yeah.
I was struck by that in reading your book, Joanne, it made me think a lot about what's going on currently, in this pandemic. We're living in a society right now, where everybody has lost something. For some people, it's just sort of some basic day to day pleasures that they've lost. And some people have lost family members. And some people have lost valuable time in careers or fertility or dating or whatever it is, they're all these, you know, I mean, it's a spectrum of loss. But everybody, whether they know it or not, has lost something: faith in your neighbors who won't wear masks and get vaccinated or whatever it is, we've all just been through and are going through a time of tremendous loss. And it's so interesting to see the different ways people are dealing with it as we start to sort of reemerge into society. And I was really struck by that, Joanne, in reading your book, that it felt incredibly relevant to me in light of the pandemic.
Yeah, and I just wanted to add, just to give context for those who haven't yet read Sorry For Your Loss, that when you were talking about Evie and Oren, that Evie lost a friend, and Oren was in a car accident and lost both of his parents as well as being very badly injured himself. So that's the the different level so to speak of loss that we were talking about.
I found that even within my own family when my mom died it was like, is it harder to lose your wife or your mom or your sister or your daughter? And the answer is, there is no answer because it's just all horrible. And there's no way to compare it. I recently started going to a weekly grief group. It's called the Dead Parents Club. And it's just all people like 18 to 40 ish, who lost a parent. And it's been very interesting for me, because I don't relate to people as much as I thought that I would going into it. A lot of people lost their dads. And then people also lost their parents from all different kinds of ways that are so different from cancer, there's suicide, there's alcoholism, accidents, murder, just all sorts of things that feel really incomprehensible to me, it's like, you can't really know what it's like, unless you've gone through it. That's all just a big mystery.
There was that part in your book, Tyler, where you talked about, I think, the guilt, you found not to put your words in your mouth, but really resonated with me, when you talked about sort of the guilt of being the oldest sister, and having had the most time with your mom that I felt that acutely, that was really moving.
And it was so honest too. I mean, as the youngest, I feel the opposite with, you know, siblings. So, I mean, that was one of the things that I love so much about your book was the honest, honest, honest feelings, even if they were something that people don't always admit out loud, but they're there and they're real, and they're valid.
Being really honest and vulnerable, about like every part of death, for me, I feel a lot of relief and comfort. And I found that in talking with other people in this grief group and just in my life about grief it, it's just nice to talk about the weird stuff and the gross stuff and embarrassing stuff. It helps a lot.
Well, this kind of brings me to another question I wanted to ask all of you. Was it hard to find a publisher willing to take on this potentially uncomfortable topic?
It was so hard. I did not anticipate that the topic of gun violence in schools was going to be quite as polarizing as it was. My agent first sent out the book, I believe at the end of 2017. This was before the shooting happened in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and the mass shootings tend to get more publicity attention. And don't even get me started on the racial and social class issues of what tragedies we choose to cover in the news and the 24 hour news cycle and how that affects racial inequality. But those students who survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas were so beautifully vocal and articulate and lovely and old enough to be able to express themselves in a way that I think we hadn't necessarily seen before, that I do feel like that was a little bit of a tipping point in terms of getting people comfortable with talking about the topic of school shootings. But I felt so shocked when we were trying to sell the book, a lot of editors said, Oh, middle school students are not thinking about or talking about this issue. It's not on their minds. And my agent, and I would kind of laugh to each other because at the time, I had a child in kindergarten, and she was already doing active shooter drills at school. And so there's no child in public school who has not been through an active shooter drill, they are all quite aware of what that is, unfortunately, that alone is pretty traumatizing for a lot of students. It's not something that we can pretend is not on their minds. I think parents and adults in general think that we're protecting children. Oftentimes, I find kids are just looking for an in to start the conversation. And I really wanted my book to be a conversation starter. And I do think a lot of adults are not aware of how much kids know. The minute my kids could read... I was aware, you know, we were in a pizza parlor in Brooklyn, and my daughter was five and a school shooting had happened. And there was a TV on in the background and the crawl was going across the bottom. And I realized, Oh, she can read. There's no keeping her from this anymore. Unfortunately, they're aware and we need to give them platforms to talk about hard things.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely agree. Hiding things like death and grief and unfortunately, school shootings, you're not doing kids any service because they find out about it anyway. So wouldn't you rather talk to them about it and open a conversation and a dialogue?
Exactly. I like to compare it to talking to kids about sex. It's like, do you want them to learn from their friends and get all kinds of misinformation and myths? Or do you want to tell them about it, and infuse it with your values and your guidance and your perspective? So, you know, it was just tremendously hard to find a publisher. And honestly, to find an editor, and I sympathize, they would often say, you know, it takes, you know, two years to publish a book, I don't know, if I want to sit with this material for the next two years. And I, you know, I get it. But I felt compelled to stick with this, because there are so many people who never are given that option of if they want to deal with this problem, and carry it with them for years and years and the rest of their lives. You know, it was an honor to be a voice for those people, I hope. And, you know, I consulted lots of experts and did a ton of research to be as helpful and as sensitive as possible, because I also feel strongly that survivors should not be responsible for telling their own stories until they're ready, or if they want to, and that these stories need to be told. But I did meet some resistance, because it's not my personal story. And I said, you know, this is, this is a lot to ask of survivors to say that the only way that this story can get told is firsthand; we need to have this conversation to work towards ending gun violence. And we cannot wait until somebody just happens to be ready to write the right book at the right time. I came up against a lot of obstacles to publishing this book that shocked me because I thought this was a no brainer. No one wants children to die in school shootings. From the beginning was very clear, I'm donating a portion of my proceeds to gun violence advocacy organizations and working with a bunch of organizations towards making sure that the book is as helpful and responsible and thoughtful as possible, you know, just seems to me so logical, and so many people just did not want to touch it.
So let's just give a quick shout out to your editor and your publisher, please name them?
Yes. Well, I was very lucky to sell the book to Amy Fitzgerald at Lerner Publishing Group. And the imprint is Carolrhoda. And every single step of the way has been a dream with them. Lerner is a wonderful publisher for this book, because they do a lot of educational publishing. And they have a great relationship with schools and libraries. And that's been really helpful and wonderful for Aftermath. I did get other offers on the book from people who wanted to change a lot of things about the book. And I'm not averse to changing but they wanted to change some really foundational things like the first offer I got was someone who wanted to make the event in the book a hurricane instead of a school shooting, that all of these students...
That's a whole different book!
That's what I said. I said, That's great, that's a different book. And I was not willing to compromise that. So it was incredible to meet Amy. She got the book from the get go, she understood what I was trying to do. You know, of course, she had changes and edits and notes, but she really understood the heart of it. And and that is a gift that I wish for every author in the world to find an editor who gets your story.
So Tyler, did you have any trouble finding a publisher for your book?
Actually, I have to say I really lucked out. I got a book deal to make this book. It wasn't the other way around. And I had just been posting illustrations on the internet for years and years. And then this publisher emailed me and kind of cold asked if I'd be interested in doing a book and it was like a Cinderella moment. Her name is Lauri Hornick. She's from Dial which is a an imprint of Penguin Random House. I call her my literary fairy godmother because she kind of plucked me out of obscurity and was so supportive and wonderful. The whole process, it sort of felt like I had so much bad luck with my mom dying, like she was diagnosed when she was already at stage four. So it was just like Bad, bad, bad, the whole time bad. And then here, I got really a lucky, wonderful chance. So it felt like a little karma.
The funny thing is that my connection to gun violence is that my grandfather was a gun violence activist and he wrote for The Washington Post, he was an editorial writer. And he wrote about it a lot. And in one instance, I think at some consecutive days, he wrote about it to influence President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign one of the first gun Reform Acts into law. And what they called it then was handgun control. And when I think about how far we have not come since the 1950s 60s and 70s. When my grandfather was writing about this, not only did we not solve handguns, but now we're talking about machine guns. It is a little bit dispiriting, but you know, there's that whole, that the bend of the arc of justice bends, you know the moral arc of justice... So we'll get there.
Joanne, how about you? Was it difficult to get your book published?
It's a weird answer: yes and no, my editor at Orca Book Publishers, which is a Canadian publisher, but they distribute in the US as well; my editor is Tanya Trafford, and she is amazing and I love her, and Sorry For Your Loss is actually my fourth book with her. We did shop it elsewhere, I was kind of hoping to have it with a New York publisher or a US publisher. My agent was surprised, and I was surprised because I got so much great feedback from my beta readers and people were so excited. But yeah, we just got a bunch of rejections. So I stayed with Orca, and I'm happy. Tanya made the book so much better. And they made it such a beautiful book. And I'm super, super proud of it. So all good in the end.
It does seem as if uncomfortable topics are more acceptable now in children's literature than they used to be. Do you have any theories to any of you have any theories as to why that is?
I sort of feel like people are just more open about so many topics now. You know, people talk about going to therapy now, openly. And before it was really hush hush.
I think there are no taboos anymore. We talk about everything, which is a good thing. And I also think there's some sort of one upmanship of issue books, and how much tragedy can you have? We look at issue books as being important books and reflective of society and what kids need. So I think that's part of it too, be it for good or bad.
Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing similar trends in television. Art is the great icebreaker for a lot of people. You know, I think back to like, Will and Grace when I was in high school, in college, and what that meant to people and the changes that made for people to identify and be like, oh, yeah, I see that, I get it. And for kids to be able to come out as a result of starting that conversation. I think we have the opportunity to do that in books. It's, it's incredible. But yeah, I think it's changed dramatically in the five years from when I started sort of pitching this book to agents to now, I've seen tons of change, and I'm so happy about that.
Yeah, seems like it's sort of a snowball effect, maybe it's kind of exponentially increasing. Sorry, For Your Loss is a very deliberately Jewish book, Dancing at the Pity Party shows us Judaism kind of naturally woven into the characters lives; Aftermath is what I call casually Jewish, the characters are identified as Jewish, but it doesn't really impact the story directly. I'd like you to talk about why it's important to you, for Judaism to be reflected in your writing to whatever degree that it is.
I remember as a kid feeling really frustrated about the lack of Jewish representation. I was really into the American Girl books, they were like, my favorite thing. In elementary school every week, we'd go to the library, and I's pick one out. And for each of the different American Girls, there was a Christmas story. And it just felt like why can't my thing be the main event and not like a weird side character or extra or something? So for me, I just really wanted to portray Judaism in the way that it feels to me, which is more about the culture than anything, I just like, you can't take it out of who I am, no matter what I'm believing in that particular day, but it's very much part of me and my identity and my family. And I hope that I'm able to give readers that nice, familiar feeling when they read my book and hear about the lox and bagels and whatever and makes them think of their families too.
Eventually American girl did get a Jewish character, Rebecca.
I know I, I was an adult when I found out about that. And I was still thrilled. When I was a little kid actually, my parents helped me write a letter to the American Girl company asking for them to make a Jewish doll.
Oh, so we have you to thank! Oh, yeah!
I remember they responded and they said, we're working on another doll right now, but maybe after that, and it was like 10 more characters until they made a Jewish one. But, you know, however long it takes, it's better late than never.
Right. Joanne, tell us about how important it is for you to have Judaism reflected in your writing.
Sorry For Your Loss, because of my experience with a Jewish funeral home, it's built right into that book. So many of these rituals with Jewish funerals and burial, I think are just lovely, as lovely as death can be. And I wanted to share that experience. And also as a tribute to my dad, I mean, let's be honest. But as far as all my books having Jewish characters, with antisemitism on the rise and feeling othered so much, I want to normalize contemporary Jewish kids, I want Jewish kids to see themselves in books, and I want non Jewish kids to read my books and think, Oh, they're just like me, but maybe they go pray somewhere else, or they eat different food or whatever. The things that make us essentially human are the same.
Definitely. Emily?
You know, like Tyler said, growing up, I was always so frustrated that this sort of default setting in most of the books I read was white Christian, I was lucky enough to grow up in a community that was incredibly diverse. And I couldn't understand why I couldn't find that in children's literature. It's better now. But I still feel like when I was looking for books about Jewish characters, certainly as a kid, and even into my 20s and 30s, the focus was on something Jewish it was, you know, so and so's crazy Bat Mitzvah. Or it was a Holocaust book. There should be books about bat mitzvahs, there should be books about the Holocaust, there should be books about every part of the Jewish experience. But I also wanted there to be books where it was incidental, where it was not part of the issue. And I certainly felt like Aftermath had enough issues to deal with. Not that being Jewish is an issue. But I very purposefully did not delve deep into it in the book, I wanted it to be just the way that the characters' races and ethnicities are sort of casually tossed in there. And you can sort of see as much or as little of it as you're looking for. There's a non binary character in Aftermath who's only mentioned a few times, and it's one of those things where very few people will pick up on it, but the kid who's reading it looking for it will find it, you know, feel seen, hopefully, this person just has "they" pronouns, it's a blink and you'll miss it. But I don't want anybody to be like, Oh, that book is about a Jewish character so it doesn't apply to me; it's just sort of in the background. And I think we need that as much as we need more overtly Jewish, but we need the whole spectrum. So I don't think I'm ever gonna write a book where somebody is not Jewish, but I do like to write along that spectrum, or sometimes it's a big part of the story. And sometimes it's just purely incidental.
All good answers. So what are the hallmarks of the Jewish approach to death and grief? And is there anything unique about it?
I don't know if it's unique. But it's just the gathering around, you know, the whole minyan thing and having to have 10 people to pray with you and do the special prayers every day while you're in shiva. It's almost forced community. It's built in, these rules are for you, to help you. Actually, a book I read recently called The Beauty of What Remains by Rabbi Steven Leder, it's all about grieving and being around people who are passing and I just highly recommend it, even though it's not a kid's book. One of the things that resonated with me in this book is you have to stand up to do the mourners prayer, even though you don't feel like standing up. You don't even feel like being with other people. But you get up and you do it and you're with other people. And that really resonated with me how people really gather around. I remember when my mum passed one of my mom's Mahjong friends -- I know it's so on the nose that my mum had a Mahjong group.
Yeah, my mum has one too. So...
My mom did too.
So one of, one of her Mahjong friends was like a General, gathering people to write on the list of who was sending in dinner what night. I just about burst into tears because it was like, Thank you! Like, things you don't even want to think about. And she wasn't involving the family at all. She was like, you're having Tuesday and you've got Wednesday and who's doing Thursday lunch, and it feels like such a Jewish thing to just gather around. And I think that's one of the things that I love most about Jewish funerals and passings.
I couldn't agree more. I was like nodding so hard at everything you're saying, it's gonna knock myself over. I feel like the shiva for me was just so essential to my healing. I have not been to many funerals in my life that are not Jewish. I've been to a ton of shivas for people close to me and people that are distant. And there's just something so familiar about them. It's like that sound of everyone talking at the same time that like, low hum and the smells of food; and everything about death is so unfamiliar, or at least it was, for me, it was the first time I had experienced a really tragic death. I'd had distant older relatives die before, but I kind of felt like I was just floating in the void and having this aggressive familiarity kind of like propping me up and people shoving food at me and like telling me where to sit. It was just so comforting. It was like someone else is in control, I can just focus on the important thing, which is healing. Yeah, I would recommend it to anyone grieving even if you're not calling it a shiva, just having an open house with family and friends that isn't explicitly funeral time, or it's, it's more just about being with your family. And you don't have to be discussing the deceased person all the time, or you can but you're talking about funny stories, and just like memories and normal stuff, not over the top, sad dramatic stuff. I just... 10 out of 10 for me, for shivas. That's my Yelp review. Hopefully won't be doing one anytime soon. But if I have to...
"Would recommend."
I was just gonna say, I mean, I also was nodding a lot. It's very weird to say it this way. But I think Jews do death really well. I think we do funerals pretty great. My husband's family is half Jewish and half not. And so I had sort of the direct comparison. He lost several grandparents in a short period of time. And the juxtaposition between the way that we did the Jewish funerals and the way that we did the other funerals was absolutely striking to me. I love how specific Judaism is about it. I think what was hard about doing the sort of vaguely Christian funerals is that at least in the kind of religion that they had observed, there were not a lot of specifics. And so there was so much decision fatigue, and there was a lot of ambiguity. And there was a lot of, well, I don't know, when should we do it, like, this week isn't convenient for this person, and next week isn't good. And Jewish funerals are like, No, you do it tomorrow. There's no compromise. Tyler, I liked this, in your book, you talked about the walking around the block at the end of shiva, it's sort of ceremonial, like we're done, we're back in the world. And then even beyond that, you know, there's the first 30 days. And then there's the year in the yahrzeit, and the unveiling and all of these traditions that force you... you know, when my husband's grandfather died, we all got together. And you know, there was sort of the question of when will we all see each other again, everybody spread out. And a year later, we gathered again for the unveiling of his headstone, and I was like, damn, this is the way to do it. There's like a prescribed way for things to be done. You know, not that death is awesome in any way. But I think a lot of the Jewish funeral customs, they take the guesswork out of what's already a really hard time. And it's funny, because I compare that a lot to the Jewish rituals around birth, you have the child and you're the person giving birth, eight days later, you're supposed to receive guests in your house and have a bris if it's a boy, and boy, did I not want to do that when my son was born. It wasn't my best day. And the whole thing was mildly traumatic, in its own way. But there was something lovely about people coming over and bringing you food and baby gifts, you know, and it was nice to know when and how to do it. And there's there's a lot to be said for a ritual and general, beginning end of life and everywhere in between.
And one of the other quick sound bites that I got out of that book, The Beauty of What Remains is that he says that the shiva gives, it's giving you permission to grieve and just sit with it. And because you don't have a choice, you can't go elsewhere. So it's sort of it forces you to give yourself permission to just be with it.
Yeah, I totally agree. I think of people who don't do a shiva or who are in a kind of career where they don't get a lot of days off or something where they have to lose someone and immediately go back to regular life. And I don't know how they do it. The shiva and the whole process is such a like, little gentle curve into going back into real life instead of jumping into it.
I've been asking all the questions, but we've got a crowd here today. Do any of you have questions for each other?
I have a couple. So for Tyler, I'll admit that I really had to prepare myself to read your book. I bought it and I sat with it for a while. I lost my mom in 2013. She was my best friend and I still feel it very acutely. So your book sat on the corner of my desk where it sits right now, for a long time. But then I picked it up. And I'm so glad I did read it. And I felt that I got to really know your mom and how you felt about her. And I think I even put in my Goodreads review that it was like a love letter to your mom and it was just so beautiful. So thank you for sharing her and your family with everybody. I know my mom is super, super, super proud of my book, and wherever she is, she's telling her Mahjong friends, that she gets partial credit for it. I know she, I know she's, she's hocking this thing in heaven, or wherever she is, she's bragging. And I am absolutely positive that your mom is similarly proud of you. But I wonder, what do you think she would say about the book?
That is such a good question. I went through a whole process during my writing of the book where I was freaking out that my mom wouldn't want me to make it, I was just like, talking myself into a hole, I brought it up in therapy all the time, because my mom was a very private person. And the thought of exposing these not so wonderful parts of her life, like when the cancer spread to her brain, and she was acting all weird, and I'm sure it must have been very scary to be going through that for her. So the thought that I'm exposing all this to the world, was hard for me to deal with. But where I ended up in therapy was that my therapist says that you can't offend someone who's dead. My therapist is also Jewish and lost a parent and did the whole shiva thing. So it was very helpful. And especially now that the book is out, and I've heard people's responses, I think that has helped a lot because I have heard a lot of people say similar things to what you said, that they feel like they've gotten to know my mom. And that feels really good. I feel like I portrayed her the way that she was to me and showed just how highly I thought of her. And because she had sort of a small circle of people in her life, the fact that there are all these people around the country, some people in other countries that know about her and think she's cool and are sad she died. I feel like that's objectively a good so I can kind of like, hang on to that helps me feel better.
And also how your dad feels about you and how proud he is of you, which I learned about when I read his Goodreads review of your book, which just made me absolutely start bawling. It was lovely. And I encourage Book of Life listeners to go the Tyler's dad's Goodreads review of her book.
My dad is the greatest. He wrote a review of my book right when it came out on Goodreads and it now has 900 Likes and every time he gets more likes, he emails me and my sisters and I have plans that if it gets to 1000 Likes, we're gonna get him a cake. Like "Happy 1000 Likes!"
Well, I've already Liked it. I think So Heidi and Emily have to go Like it too.
I want to recommend it to all my friends. I really want to get this 1000 Likes cake for your dad.
Oh, I appreciate that.
Listeners, in honor of this great book and of cake, please go ahead and like this review. We'll, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Okay, does anybody have any more questions for each other?
I have a question for Joanne. I was curious how you decided the age of your main characters.
Middle Grade seems to be my jam. I think it's where my maturity level sort of plateaued. I think for this book, I didn't even consciously make it middle grade. It's just what I write now. I have a question for Emily. I love how math is infused into so many parts of this book, from the jokes, to how Lucy views her family and even how she self soothes. It gives the reader a deeper glimpse into her character. And while it felt so perfect, the writer in me wants to know if you or someone you know, are like Lucy for whom math touches on absolutely everything.
My mind certainly does not utilize math as much as Lucy's does, but I do think to a much lesser extent I do put things in mathematical terms and I never even realized it. I think another way to answer that would be to say that I very consciously left ambiguous the fine line between Lucy's math love and her abilities in math and her maybe possibly obsessive and compulsive tendencies or her anxiety and the fine line there. I'm somebody who has OCD, and has had it my whole life and have benefited from therapy and medication, I'm always happy to let people know that those things really do help. We're very quick to pathologize everything and put things in categories, then I didn't want Lucy's love of math to become mental illness, but it didn't not want it to be. If you had asked me many years ago, does my brain work that way? With math? I'd say no, not at all. But as I was writing it, I realized, oh, no, this this does come from my brain, there is a part of me that thinks in math.
Isn't that funny how things about us reveal themselves when we're writing about somebody else?
I think that's part of why I like writing, I think it;s very similar to therapy. It's a constant self discovery. And when you can channel it productively and share it with people, it's wonderful. Sometimes the writing you need to do is really for you, and sometimes it's hopefully helpful to the audience. And you know, all that stuff exists on a spectrum. And you get lucky when you're able to find the sweet spot where it's mutually beneficial.
Joanne, I would love to hear more about having a funeral home in the family, and how that has affected your experience with your own grief. And also, if it has affected your experience with other people's grief.
It's a great question. Thank you. I didn't grow up in the funeral home. I kind of wish I had, I think it would have been really interesting. And maybe I would be in the funeral industry now. My dad actually started as a volunteer in the chevra kadisha in the funeral home. His great aunt was a longtime volunteer. So he was in his 60s, I think when he started. And then he recruited my mom who never thought she'd be able to do it. But she did. It's such a small hometown funeral home that there's only one paid employee.When the main guy retired, he took over. So it wasn't until I was well out of the house that they started volunteering there. But at the core of my experience, my dad does it out of a sense of duty. For him it's about respect and doing mitzvahs for people and just being there. And I love that so much about his role there. I put a page on my website that if anybody's interested, I did my own research and all the pictures that I took at the funeral home, touring around there was just absolutely fascinating.
Yeah, that's incredible that your dad started at such a later age. That's really cool.
Yeah, he didn't actually go to school for it. He's not technically a licensed funeral director. He takes great pains to make sure everybody knows that. He manages there, he needs to still get a licensed funeral director to sign off on any bodies that come in. I think he thought about going to school for it. But it's a two year course. And even though he would only ever do Jewish funerals, he still has to do all the embalming courses and all that stuff.
Makeup? Hair and makeup?
Yeah, the embalming, the chemicals, the chemistry. He just turned 81. So a man at his age. Why would I go for two years to school to learn embalming, when I'll never... you know what I mean? So...
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, he's good with it. Thank you for that question.
Tyler, I'm so curious. Did your sisters have feelings about the way you drew them, the way you wrote them, the way you remembered it?
My sisters and my dad were thankfully very generous in the way that they allowed me to represent them and the information they allowed me to share. I definitely talked to them a lot throughout the process, but only one of my sisters Spencer, my youngest sister, she read the book as I wrote it. Every time I finished a chapter I would meet her at a bakery and I would pass it across the table to her and she would read it but my other sister Cody and my dad, neither of them read the book until it was out. Thankfully, they were okay with it. I mean, I tried really hard to portray everyone where it was very clearly with love.
Yes, I mean, I should say this was not a leading question. This was not being, being like wow, the way you portrayed so and so...
Oh, no, no, I didn't feel that way. I mean, I could have portrayed some people in some ways that I did not. So there was definitely some editing before I said anything on the page.
Everybody comes off incredibly well and very relatable, but you know, you never know what's behind the scenes and like, like you said, what you could have said... and I'm fascinated by that process and how one deals with that.
I'm lucky to have the family that I have. Th ey're good people. [meow]
Including this kittycat.
He wants to be on the podcast. [meow]
It'sTikkun 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.
I think since this episode is about grief, and grieving and loss, just giving a friend that might have lost somebody a call or an email or a text, and just check in and say, Hi, how you doing? I'm here. When I lost my mom, I had a colleague who I barely knew, reach out to me. And she said, I know you don't know me very well. She says, I know what you're feeling. Let's chat. And you know what? It made the world of difference to be able to unload on somebody who didn't know my family, didn't know anything. But to know that there was somebody out there that cared. So check in with somebody that you think might appreciate a kind word or coffee, or just check in.
Yeah, that was great, Joanne. And I would say something a little bit similar to that. If you have a friend or family member or colleague or whoever, who maybe lost someone kind of a while ago, that you're aware of, the next time that you're chatting with that person if you could kind of like work in some questions about that person, and they don't have to be death related. In fact, I think it is even better if they're not related. Whenever someone asks me like, What kind of movies did your mom like, or something like that. I'm just like, dying to talk about it. And I think that's like such a subtle little mitzvah, giving people who've lost someone long enough ago that the fuss has died down, giving them an opportunity to spend time and have connection around their loved one. And I think that's really helpful and special. I would love if more people in my life did that.
Those are both such good answers. I'd like to give a shout out to some of the organizations I really admire, that are doing great work around gun violence, because that's that's my thing with this book and but loss in general, in researching organizations that I admired, I found there are different ways to approach the topic. There's sort of the preventative, the legislative, and the aftermath, for lack of a better word. And an organization I think does a really good job with helping people afterwards is called the Ana Grace Project. I'm a huge fan of their work. The family that started it lost a daughter at Sandy Hook in 2012. And they've really used their grief to educate and help other people, which I find so admirable. Grief can turn us inwards. It can also inspire us to look outwards, and Nelba Marquez-Greene is the name of Ana Grace's mom, and she writes and speaks so eloquently about her experience. And in sharing it with the world, I think that's an incredible service. They offer a lot of trauma support for people who've been through hard things. We need more of that in the world. Another organization I love is Sandy Hook Promise. And then Moms Demand, which is part of Everytown.org. But I think in the spirit of Nelba Marquez-Greene and the Ana Grace Project, I would say sharing your experience, which you both have done through your books, can be a tremendous gift. Even if it's not about death, or grief or loss, sharing experiences of hard things is a mitzvah. You never know when somebody is listening and needed to hear you say that, you know, I'm not saying everybody needs to disclose all of their trauma. But I've certainly found that talking about mental illness, talking about therapy and medication, things like that are really important, because I've certainly been impacted by people who've done that in the past. And I like to pay that forward. So anybody listening, looking for a way to get involved, you know, I love those organizations, but also it can be something as simple as sharing something that's hard for you in hopes that it sheds a little light for somebody else.
Excellent. Is there anything else that any of you want to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you?
Can I just take a moment to talk about how amazing Emily's audiobook is, that she narrated herself?
Oh, thank you!
I loved it! I listened in the car, and I took an extra trip to Costco so I could continue listening to the audiobook because that's sacred time in the car because my Costco is an hour away.
That's amazing. You took an extra hour car trip just for that!
That's some dedication. Oh, thanks. That means so much to me. It was such a pleasure to do. I was super anxious about it at the beginning.
Well, it certainly doesn't come across. It was lovely. Yeah.
Well, thank you. That's so nice to hear. I'm excited. I don't know how these things work or why but the price of the audiobook is significantly lower, which I'm really thrilled about, I hope that it allows people who need it, whether it's you know, they are blind or have reading disabilities, or whatever the reason is, or just purely economically, I hope it allows more people to get their hands on the story. And I'm super grateful to my publisher, for letting me do it and for making it really accessible.
Yeah, it's really, really well done. And Tyler, I won't listen to your audio book, because I love the pictures. Thank you so much for writing it. Thank you both.
I just loved both of your books. I had that experience, Tyler, that you wrote about with my grandmother where we knew she was going to die. Her quality of life was terrible. Hospice had come and it took a really long time. And there's that really strange, awkward moment where you're like, I guess I'm rooting for it. I really appreciate you sharing that. And it's things like that, that made me feel less guilty for having had that experience. Joanne, for many people, it will be the first time they're reading about not just a Jewish funeral home, but any funeral home and I really appreciate you doing the research and bringing that to life for people and demystifying the process.
Thank you. Thank you. That means a lot.
Okay, excellent. This has been such a fascinating conversation, and an important one too. One last thing that I'm thinking is that Tyler's tikkun olam suggestion was actually something that we could do right now. So I wanted to ask if you would like to just tell us one brief little nice thing about someone that you've lost in your life.
All I can think about right now is how much my mom loved John Claude Van Damme movies. That's all I can think of because you mentioned movies. She thought he was so nice to look at and she just loved his movies.
That's so cute!
It's so weird.
Oh, I love that.
Oh, that's so cute. My grandma just died recently and I was just talking with my family about this very cute thing she used to do. I went to college sort of near my grandparents, so they used to take me out to lunch or dinner a lot as a college student and then after college as a young adult, I spent a lot of time with them at the restaurant Maggiano's. It's is an Italian restaurant and at the front desk where you like check in there's this bowl of individually wrapped mints. And they're kind of like an m&m they're chocolate, but they have mint on the inside with candy on the outside. And my grandma was a huge chocoholic. And she and my grandpa would also go to the same restaurant all the time, they would know the waitstaff and everything. So we went to this one restaurant all the time. And every single time we went as we were leaving, my grandma would reach into the bowl of mints and take like a big handful, not just like a few, but like, like she was like taking Halloween candy. And she would give me some of them as we were walking out with like our winter coats and everything. And she'd go, these are good. Like every single time. I just thought it was so sweet and no one who worked there ever, like scolded her anything. I mean, she's this sweet little old lady, but yeah. I loved that about her.
That's so relatable. I feel like I've had similar experiences with my grandparents. But the person who really comes to mind for me, who I think I miss most acutely is actually my husband's grandmother. My husband and I started dating when we were 19 in college. His grandparents were younger than my grandparents, and so we had more time with them. My husband's grandmother was the one grandparent who lived long enough to meet our daughter. But I think my favorite thing about her was how she welcomed me into their family. She would call me probably weekly, or every other week, she was born and raised in Germany had a very thick German accent. And every single time she called whether she got me or left a message, she would start off the call by saying, Emily, this is your grandmother speaking. It like made me cry every time because she could have said her first name. She could have said this is Jim's grandmother. She could have even said this is grandma because I called her grandma. But the way that she said Emily, this is your grandmother was just like oh, it's just gets right to the heart. And I miss her. And I wish I had found a way technologically to record those messages. The last message she left me, we had just found out that our second child was going to be a boy. She had two boys. And she left me this message about how having a boy was just the most wonderful... I was nervous because you know, we've had a girl and this is so ridiculous, because I don't even believe in gender, but you know, whatever. People put so much emphasis on gender. And she left me this beautiful message about how having a boy was the best thing. She unfortunately died shortly after that and never got to meet our son, but her phone messages were epic. And the way that she said, this is your grandmother. That is a gift to give somebody, that kind of acceptance into a family is like, Man, that is the best thing.
That's such a beautiful story. And I'm regretting my John Claude Van Damme story. [laughter]
You can you can tell another one. We got nothing but time.
My mum's mad now. And she's like, oy, Joanne, please. But no I'll leave it because it'll make her laugh.
I like those, I love those little details about people. I think that's the stuff, the specificity. You know, they say in like in comedy. What makes something funny is the specificity. I feel like it's the same in memories.
I'd fully agree. We're all just a collection of weird little anecdotes and details. That's just one of them.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
So true. Heidi, do you have a memory of somebody that you want to share? Because I love hearing people's memories.
Oh, thanks. Yeah. So the most recent death in my family is my husband's aunt Ranelle, who I never really got to know all that well. But she was an important part of his growing up. She was the younger sister of his mom. And so she actually was a teenager, when he was a little boy. And she lived with them for a while when his dad went on a sabbatical to England, and she came along. I don't know if she was helping babysit, or if she just wanted an excuse to go to England. But she went along. And later, because she had made friends in England, once she was home again, she kind of ran away to England. She said, I'm going to go visit my friends in England. And then she just didn't come back. And she ended up marrying an Englishman. And eventually they came back and lived in the States.
Okay, I'm obsessed with that story. Because first of all, who doesn't want to run away to England? But also because one book idea that I've been mulling around has to do with a family going abroad and bringing a teenage girl along, because when my kids were really little, my husband had to go work on a project in Vienna, Austria, and we brought a friend's daughter along with us to help with the kids because my kids were really little. And I was like, wait, what, we're going to go someplace where we don't know anybody? And you're going to work full time? And I'm going to be alone in a city where I don't speak the language? And so we brought along a friend and I've always thought that's like, it's such a cool setting for a book. So I may be asking you some questions about your husband's aunt to you know, mine for even more fun details. It's such a good life experience.
Tyler Feder, Joanne Levy, Emily Barth Isler, thank you, all of you. This has been a wonderful conversation.
Thank you. This was great.
Thank you for having us.
Thank you all so much. It's like meeting a group of friends. And I feel like I know you guys because I've read your books. Yeah. It's so fun to talk to you.
Thanks, new best friends!
Yeah, I wish we could all have coffee.
Absolutely.
[MUSIC, TEASER] This is Dani Colman, author of The Unfinished Corner. I'll be joining you soon on The Book of Life podcast, and I'd like to dedicate this episode to Rabbi Dr. Jeremy Collick. Rabbi Collick officiated my bat mitzvah many years ago. He passed away not that long ago, but his influence remains very very strong in my life and in the book as well.
[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473 or bookoflife podcast@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 @bookoflife pod. 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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