In the 1921 Yiddish children’s book “The Wind That Got Angry,” by Moyshe Kulbak, an “old, wandering wind” finds himself booted out of his village when a thaw sets in. He tries to find somewhere in the woods to rest. He’s tired and wants to sleep, but no one wants him around. The oak tree…
My Facebook newsfeed is always alive with kittens, but last week it was alive with political kittens. Israeli author Nurit Sternberg has written a children’s book called “,” about two kittens “rescued” from last summer’s fighting zone in Gaza and brought to Israel by the IDF soldier Matan Meshi. Both the kittens and Meshi happen…
In 1951, Follett published Sydney Taylor’s “All-of-a-Kind Family,” the first children’s book for a mass audience that featured American Jews. It’s been in print ever since. The Jewish tenements on the Lower East Side at the turn of the century glow with nostalgia; think Proust’s madeleine as a challah. Taylor’s editor worried that readers wouldn’t…
Wikimedia Commons The Jewish book award season is in full swing. The winners of the 2015 National Jewish Book Awards were announced last week. Today, the Association of Jewish Libraries released the list of laureates of the Sydney Taylor Book Award that honors new books for children and teens about the Jewish experience. In the…
● Beautiful Yetta’s Hanukkah Kitten By Daniel Pinkwater, illustrated by Jill Pinkwater Feiwel and Friends, 32 pages, $17.99. Spared from the butchers’ knife, Yiddish-speaking Yetta makes her home in Brooklyn, trying to find a new family and do good where she can. A Holocaust survivor? Not exactly. Yetta is big white chicken with long eyelashes…
My girlfriend hates “Car Talk,” so I was listening alone while doing the breakfast dishes one weekend late last summer when Tom and Ray started pattering about airline seats that are too narrow for wide butts. “We need another unit of measurement for butt size,” said Tom — or maybe Ray, who knows. “We have…
Those hoping there would be a sequel to Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” are in for a disappointment. A Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a poem called “Back to the Wild” has been suspended following a copyright complaint from HarperCollins, which published the original “Wild Things.” The U.K.-based crowdfunding…
Earlier this week, Matthue Roth wrote about why kids love scary stories. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: I was trying to figure out how to get people to buy “My…
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