The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Second Chance Summer by Sarah Kapit Henry Holt Books, 2023 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Karen Shakman Buy at Bookshop.org Second Chance Summer tells the story of two former best friends, Chloe and Maddie, and the summer they spend orbiting one another at a sleep-away performing arts camp. The two middle schoolers were friends back home, until an unfortunate incident involving a performance of The Music Man goes viral and heralds the end of the girls’ friendship. Maddie resents Chloe for the part she played in Maddie’s very public embarrassment and, while Chloe is sorry, she doesn’t quite understand what she did that was so wrong. Where Maddie is slightly awkward and a little insecure, Chloe is at home in the spotlight. Maddie has always been in her shadow, a shadow that she admits is exciting and fun, but a shadow all the same, and she has grown tired of it. At the sleep-away camp, neither girl is happy to be there with the other, and they end up in a battle of revenge that ultima

Passover: A Celebration of Freedom by Bonnie Bader, illustrated by Joanie Stone Big Golden Books (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Karen Shakman Buy at Bookshop.org The Passover story is one filled with drama and intrigue, and Bonnie Bader does the story justice in her new retelling: Passover: A Celebration of Freedom . In the spirit of the Golden Books, it is a fairly traditional and loyal retelling of the story of Moses and the Jewish people’s escape from Egypt, with iconic imagery of baby Moses in the basket, the burning bush, and the parting of the Red Sea. Bader deftly captures the highlights of the story and has great instincts for the elements that are of most interest to children who may be hearing it for the first time, or for children who are familiar with the story. Perhaps the most exciting spread of the book is when Bader covers six of the plagues, building tension as we move from itchy lice to the slaying of the first born. When we