The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

 Nathan's Song by Leda Schubert, illustrated by Maya Ish-Shalom Dial Books for Young Readers (imprint of Penguin Young Readers) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Ruth Horowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Nathan’s Song is a charming, well-told tale about creative drive, family love, immigrant pluck, and the benevolence of good luck. Growing up in a Russian shtetl, Nathan loves to sing, and longs to study opera. His family scrimps and saves, and when Nathan is sixteen, they send him to Italy to pursue his ambition, vowing to join him when he’s famous. When Nathan accidentally boards a ship bound for New York, it seems that all is lost. But Nathan sings on the boat to earn his passage, sings on the streets to make a start in New York, where he finds a music teacher, a singing career and a wife. His dreams are not complete, however, until he is able to send for his family and greet them on Ellis Island with a celebration of song. Maya Ish-Shalom’s folkloric illustrations are blocky and brig

Try It! How Frieda Caplan Changed the Way We Eat  by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by Giselle Potter Beach Lane Books (imprint of Simon & Schuster) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org Moving quickly from bookkeeper at LA’s Seventh Street produce market in the mid-1950s to sales (the only woman among a workforce of men) Frieda Caplan “loved people” and “She loved to talk.” Frieda also loved to try new things, especially fruits and vegetables other than apples, bananas, and potatoes. Frieda’s instincts and “a funny feeling in her elbows” told her when she’d found something other people would grow to love too. With packaging and recipes she encouraged people to try new things, like mushrooms, while the other salesmen all said, “No!” It was not long before Frieda owned her own produce company and sold unusual fruits and vegetables: black radishes, baby corn, kiwi fruit, jicama, and quince. If you see produce in the grocery you’ve never seen before, chances ar

 The Poetry of Secrets by Cambria Gordon Scholastic Press Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Cheryl Fox Strausberg Buy at Bookshop.org Isabel Perez is a 16 year old in Trujillo, Spain in 1481. While she longs to be a poetess, she faces the reality that she is of marriageable age and her parents are antsy to get her married off. Especially since her family is hiding a dark secret: they are Jewish. This dual life they lead makes them cautious about the people they come into contact with and motivates them to arrange Isabel’s marriage with a secure Old Christian family. It becomes even more urgent once it is clear that the Inquisition is coming. One fateful day on her way home from a poetry reading, Isabel meets a good looking young man. Diego is equally as intrigued about Isabel, and the two begin meeting in secret and eventually fall in love. Diego, from impeccable Old Christian lineage, knows that his family will never consent for him to marry a New Christian girl, but continues to hope t

Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued  by Peter Sís Norton Young Readers (imprint of WW Norton and Company) Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Meg Wiviott Buy at Bookshop.org In December 1938, Nicholas Winton, an English stockbroker, visited a friend in Prague to help hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly Jewish, who escaped the Nazi invasion of Sudetenland. Knowing that war was coming, time was running out, and something needed to be done, Nicky got started. England would give unaccompanied minors temporary admission, so working out of his hotel room, Nicky worked with desperate parents to arrange safe passage for their children. Returning to England, Nicky continued to work: finding foster families, applying for visas, and making travel arrangements. “Eight trains left Prague in the spring and summer of 1939.” A ninth train carrying 250 more children was stopped at the border on September 1, the day Germany attacked Poland. Nicky lived a good

Who Was Levi Strauss? by Ellen Labrecque Penguin Workshop (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacy Nockowitz Buy at Bookshop.org Ellen Labrecque’s Who Was Levi Strauss? is a new title in the extensive WHO HQ series. The book is a cradle-to-grave biography of 19th century immigrant entrepreneur Loeb Strauss, who would later change his name to Levi Strauss and build the blue jeans empire that still dominates the fashion industry today. Labrecque’s book follows the formula of the series, laying out Strauss’s humble beginnings in Bavaria as the youngest child of door-to-door sewing supply salesman Hirsch Strauss and his second wife, Rebecca. A few years after two of the Strauss brothers immigrate to America and open a successful sewing supply store in New York City, Loeb, along with his mother and other siblings, follows. Labrecque does not shy away from explaining the Strauss family’s reason for wanting to leave Bavaria. Life for Jews in the German state a

Some Other Now by Sarah Everett Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Cheryl Fox Strausberg Buy at Bookshop.org Jessi Rumfield has never felt at home in her own family. Her mother has debilitating depression and her father spends most of his time tending to her and largely ignoring Jessi. It’s no wonder that when Rowan Cohen - Jessi’s best friend - pseudo-adopts her into his family, she feels closer to Rowan’s mother Mel and her two boys, instead of her own parents. After admitting her long-standing crush on Rowan’s older brother Luke, and having that crush reciprocated, Luke and Jessi start a whirlwind romance, no easy feat for a high school senior and a college freshman. However, her happiness is short-lived; On one fateful night, everything goes spectacularly wrong and results in fatal consequences. A year later, Jessi is trying to fill her time to avoid dealing with her problems but it only gets worse when Luke returns home from college a

 Rebel Daughter by Lori Banov Kaufmann Delacorte Press (imprint of Penguin Random House) Category: Young Adult Reviewer: A.R. Vishny Buy at Bookshop.org Rebel Daughter follows Esther, the daughter of a priest in the Second Temple, during the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The novel imagines the life of the young woman memorialized in real life by a two-thousand-year-old tombstone found in Southern Italy, described in the Author’s Note. Esther’s comfortable life in Jerusalem is gradually upended, as factions in the city decide to rebel against Roman authority and those that stand in their way. The fighting culminates with the siege and the destruction of the Temple. Esther is caught up in the conflict, and must survive being sold into slavery in Rome. There are few examples of Jewish historical fiction in YA that are set outside the 20th century, so the setting in itself was refreshing to see. This book follows in the tradition of The Dovekeepers and The Red Tent in rende