The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan's Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants by Norman H. Finkelstein, illustrated by Vesper Stamper Holiday House, 2024 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeanette Brod Buy at Bookshop.org We are a nation of immigrants, but we rarely consider the obstacles to Americanization faced by new arrivals to our country. Abraham Cahan’s gift to new immigrants was a passion to help them navigate their complicated and confusing relationship to a new home. In Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan’s Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants , an award winning author and an award winning illustrator have given us a masterful biography about an important voice in American Jewish history whose legacy is probably more well known than his name. If your family was connected to the waves of immigration from Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, they probably read The Forverts in Yiddish. Despite their place of birth or national language, the Jews of those gen

Berliners by Vesper Stamper Knopf (imprint of Random House), 2022 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Ronda Einbinder   Buy at Bookshop.org In WWII Berlin, fifteen-year-old Rudolf is given the Hitler Jugend uniform and told to be on the lookout for Jews in critically-acclaimed author-illustrator Vesper Stamper’s latest novel Berliners . Rudolf doesn’t give it much thought until he discovers his crush is Jewish and turns her in. Later when Rudolf meets scared teen Ilse, he realizes he must do what he can to save her. She will be his redemption. When unfaithful Ilse discovers she is pregnant, they reluctantly decide to wed. This page-turning story fast-forwards the reader to 1961 when twins Rudi and Peter are fifteen and follow the mantra "twins against the world." Peter is a creative thinker, popular and smart. Rudi is jealous of his twin and believes in the words of the socialist party. When the parents split up, Rudolph escapes to West Berlin just before the Berlin Wall is bui