The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Code Name Kingfisher by Liz Kessler Aladdin (imprint of Simon & Schuster), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rachel Aronowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Mila and Hannie are 12 and 15 year old Jewish sisters living in Holland during World War II. Their parents have no choice but to send them to Amsterdam to live with a non-Jewish family, to protect them from the Nazis. Hannie is a headstrong and strong-willed teenager and secretly joins the Dutch Resistance as an undercover agent while Mila tries to live a normal life by making friends and trying to manage her sister's sudden aloofness, and worrying about the fate of her parents. The chapters shift between this narrative and present day London where 8th grader Liv, who is Mila's future granddaughter, is navigating friendships and school and her aging grandmother. The narrative structure of this book feels a bit uneven and the narrative shifts strike me as overwhelming for the intended audience. We have present day London, in wh

Uprising by Jennifer A. Nielsen Scholastic Press (imprint of Scholastic, Inc), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Judy Ehrenstein Buy at Bookshop.org Based on the life of Lidia Durr Zakrzewski, this is a fictionalized account of Poland under the Nazi occupation, as experienced by Lidia and her well-to-do family in Warsaw. They are not Jewish but seem to have good relationships with the Jews around them, including employing Doda as a housekeeper. Lidia is a headstrong, confident pre-teen as the book begins, talented at the piano, but the object of her mother's constant criticism, unlike her older brother, Ryszard and the memory of a long dead sister, Krystina. With Germany's invasion, life changes suddenly. Papa joins the army and is not seen again. With the months and years of war and its deprivations, Lidia grows to be an independent and resourceful young woman, determined to get an education, help others, and join the Resistance. When Doda and her mother, Bubbe are forced

The Treasure of Tel Maresh by Tammar Stein, illustrated by Barbara Bongini Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Merle Eisman Carrus   Buy at Bookshop.org What a delightful story about a family trip to Israel. The Treasure of Tel Maresha shares two stories of young girls in Israel at different times in history. Becca Goldstein is on vacation with her family, visiting an archaeological dig site in Tel Maresha, Israel. She has come reluctantly on this trip with her brother, Ben and their parents. She feels like she is missing something more fun with her friends back home in Massachusetts. Becca perks up as she begins to learn about the ancient civilization that existed in this area centuries ago. The tour guide explains how families built homes of limestone dug from the ground and the resulting caveswere cool places for storage of food and other goods. In an alternate storyline, Rebeka and her brother Benjamin are living in Maresha t

The Girl Who Fought Back: Vladka Meed and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Joshua M. Greene Scholastic Focus, 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jeanette Brod Buy at Bookshop.org The Girl Who Fought Back is an insider's account of the historic Warsaw Ghetto uprising that ironically finds our heroine stranded outside the ghetto walls on the day the revolt begins. But Vladka Meed’s story does not start there. It begins, as do many Holocaust stories, with the shocking downward spiral that afflicts Jewish families who were citizens of European cities. What sets this story apart is the portrait of despair in the life of a young woman who loses first family members, then friends, and finally fellow Resistance fighters. Survivor guilt permeates Vladka’s choices and actions with the recurring refrain, “Why am I still alive?” This telling is not for the faint-hearted. The internal dialogue is as honest as it is brutal. What balances the storytelling is the humanity and courage of a young w

Tree. Table. Book. by Lois Lowry Clarion Books (imprint of HarperCollins), 2024 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Heather J. Matthews Buy at Bookshop.org Tree. Table. Book. examines the friendship between two neighbors – Sophia Henry Winslow, 11 years old, and Sophie Gershowitz, 88 years old. Sophia, after learning that Sophie’s son suspects his mother is in the early stages of dementia, takes it upon herself to prove her friend is mentally fit, and therefore, will not need to move out of her home. Armed with a friend’s father’s copy of the Merck manual, Sophia “tests” her friend’s ability to complete tasks; for example, Sophie’s abstract reasoning is tested when she is asked to determine what the words cat, dog, hamster and gerbil have in common. After passing some “tests” and failing others, Sophia revisits one test over and over – a short-term memory test, in which Sophie is told three words and then is asked to recall the words after three minutes have passed. Trying to stack the d

Trajectory by Cambria Gordon Scholastic Press, 2024 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Rochelle Newman-Carrasco Buy at Bookshop.org When we first meet our protagonist, 17-year-old Eleanor, it’s a Friday night in 1942. Her mom expects her daughter to help with the Shabbos meal. This means Eleanor will have to put away her magazine, which is really being used to hide her math book. Young Eleanor has named Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom she shares a name, as her guardian angel and often uses her quotes to summon confidence. At school, the name Nervous Nellie stuck. And, the fact is, Eleanor is often scared. Her family in Poland is a constant worry. And her passion for mathematics is dampened because she believes she was responsible for her father, a brilliant and renowned mathematician, having a stroke. How could she possibly pursue a math career when her father is no longer able to function in this arena? Still, she is accidentally identified as a math genius and recruited to be one of a smal