The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Sydney Taylor Shmooze reviewers share some favorite titles from 2025 and answer the question "What makes this one of the most special books of the year?" Click on any book to see its Shmooze review!                      

War Games: A Novel of 1936 Berlin by Alan Gratz Scholastic Press, 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Merle Eisman Carrus   Buy at Bookshop.org   A fast paced action novel for middle school readers, War Games is a history lesson about the 1936 Olympic Games and the terror of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Author Alan Gratz interweaves real people and events from the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin with fictional characters who help round out the suspenseful story. Evie Harris has won a seat on the US Olympic team. It is the start to her dream come true, to win gold and become a movie actress. She is hoping to make enough money to give her family a new start after being forced to leave Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and move to California. On the surface everything looks magical. Berlin is clean and new, the stadium is brightly lit and alive with the excitement of the teams competing. Black American, Jesse Owens, wins gold and German Jewish fencer, Helen Mayer, competes... but...

Don't Forget to Breathe by Brianna R. Shrum & Sara Waxelbaum Harper, 2025 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Kathryn Hall   Buy at Bookshop.org   Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum, authors of Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl , have written another young adult romance. Hanna has lived on army bases all her life until her parents move to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where she convinces them to live off base for her senior year of high school. Despite her ADHD, Hanna, a pianist, is able to make friends who are comfortable with her identity as a lesbian. Zoe, also a senior at her school, is a ballet dancer on the autism spectrum with a boyfriend struggling with her plans for the future. When the two girls meet there is instant sexual tension. There is more intensity and less comic relief than in Shrum’s previous YA rom-coms. Sexual feelings are described in more detail than sexual acts. The book is well-written and realistic, with suspense as to the ending. The reader will be roo...

Don't Feed the Lion by Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi Arcadia Publishing, 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Judy Ehrenstein   Buy at Bookshop.org When bad boy soccer star Wes Mitchell gets traded, he blames the team’s Jewish manager, and the hashtag Never Trust a Jew goes viral. A few boys on Theo’s middle school soccer team bring it hyperlocal by painting the phrase as well as a swastika on his gym locker, something Theo tries to wipe off and forget. He doesn’t want to deal with the situation, he doesn’t want to take a stand, he just wants to play soccer, get his bar mitzvah over with, and not make a fuss. Fortunately, other viewpoints are heard in this multivoiced novel which deals with hero worship, speaking up, and how microaggressions and prejudice are often swept aside in an effort to not have to address them and their true meaning: ignorance and latent hate and blame. His younger sister, Annie, takes the approach of creating a fake online identity in order to engage in...

All-Nighter by Cecilia Vinesse Quill Tree (imprint of HarperCollins Children's Books), 2025 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Emily Roth   Buy at Bookshop.org   Valedictorian Autumn and rule-breaking Tara have been sworn enemies since Tara’s first day at Autumn’s all-girls school. On prom night, Autumn needs a fake ID to flirt with her crush at a college poetry reading, and Tara needs to finish writing a paper on Mrs. Dalloway – one of Autumn’s favorite books – and turn it in by 7:00am in order to graduate. The girls agree to help each other, and over the course of a single night, their chaotic, whirlwind adventure leads to unexpected feelings.  Despite the silliness of the situations the girls find themselves in, each protagonist is a fully realized character with realistic fears about the impending conclusion of high school, and the way they bond over this feels authentic. Autumn is still traumatized from a near-fatal accident years earlier and worries about feeling dist...

The Devash Jr. Book of Shemot by Chana Kupetz and Efrayim Unterman, illustrated by Rivka Tsinman Dvash Jr (imprint of Hadar), 2025 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Eva Weiss   Buy at Hadar.org   This pleasingly illustrated book presents the text of the biblical book of Exodus in chapters which follow the weekly portions. Narratives, laws, and traditional interpretations of heritage are made relevant to the daily lives and routines of children. The aim is to engage the imagination and convey the substance and ethics of scripture in a relatable way. For instance, the biblical law of safeguarding the property of another person is illustrated by interactions among children in a bowling alley. Corners of the pages are dedicated to original Hebrew verses with English translations. Each biblical portion concludes with a summary, lessons to consider, and suggestions for ways to bring biblical lessons to life ("Try it out!"), which encourages children to initiate practical good deeds...