The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Fighter in the Woods:The True Story of a Jewish Girl Who Joined the Partisans in World War ll by Joshua M. Greene Scholastic Focus, 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jeanette Brod   Buy at Bookshop.org The book begins with a dedication to the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust. That’s followed by a dramatic vignette of our heroine in the midst of a partisan raid on a pile of Nazi weapons. The reader catches their breath and is then abruptly transported to the beginning of the story in a small town in Poland on June 22, 1941. The date is significant because it marks the beginning of the German attack on the Soviets. We don’t return to the partisan raid until Chapter 16, when the reader is almost at the end of the book. Fighter in the Woods is the biography of Celia Kassow: how she flees boarding school to rejoin the family, how she joins her family in hiding and in ghettos, how she is hidden in a barn, how she connects with her brothers in the Resistance, and ho...

Max in the Land of Lies: A Tale of World War II by Adam Gidwitz Dutton Books for Young Readers (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Kathryn Hall   Buy at Bookshop.org   Max in the Land of Lies is a sequel to Max in the House of Spies and begins in 1940 with Max just outside Berlin, after a parachute drop which left his adult supervisor dead. Max has dybbuk and kobold companions, one on each shoulder, invisible and inaudible to all but Max. They comment, give comic or historical perspective and advice, and sometimes even help. Max is a spy with an official mission, but his secret mission is to find the parents who had sent him to England for safety while they remained in Berlin. What follows is exciting, suspenseful, sad, frightening, heartwarming, and funny. The end is realistic and satisfying. Many of the characters were real people, and the historical accuracy is impressive in a work of fantasy fiction. Ethical dilemmas are explored, and...

Right Back At You by Carolyn Mackler Scholastic, 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacey Rattner   Buy at Bookshop.org If time travel is the new trend in middle grade literature (think 2025 Newbery winner and Sydney Taylor honor winning books) then Right Back at You is trendy. In its own unique way, of course. It’s spring 2023. 12 year old New Yorker Mason has written a letter to Albert Einstein as part of an assignment. Instead of ending up in Einstein’s hands, it appears in baseball-loving 12 year old Talia’s closet in western Pennsylvania in 1987. And so begins a unique friendship that communicates only through letters in a wormhole that spans 36 years and 300 miles. Single child Mason’s father has left home for a bit. Mason is dealing with multiple bullies at school and a mom who is drinking too much. Talia is navigating the relationship with her best friend, and is  the victim of antisemitism that is brushed off by her teacher and administration. Mason and Talia su...

The See-You-Soon Spice Box by Pamela Ehrenberg, illustrated by Gabby Grant Kar-Ben (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2025 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Lauren Kasiarz   Buy at Bookshop.org In this intergenerational story, Silas video calls with Great-Grandma Faye and they use sweet rhyming phrases like “See you soon, Macaroon!” to say goodbye to one another. On one such call, Great-Grandma Faye introduces Silas to Havdalah, the Jewish ceremony that concludes Shabbat on Saturday evening. She shows him a spice box that his Great-Grandpa made many years prior, and with help from his dad, Silas makes his own spice box. They celebrate Havdalah together virtually, and the story concludes with Great-Grandma Faye flying to visit Silas where they perform the Havdalah rituals together in person. The pacing is well done, switching deftly between dialogue and Silas’ inner thoughts, which brings the reader along as Silas decides to create his own spice box. Gabby Grant’s colorful pen-a...

The Secret Recipe by Ilan Stavans, illustrated by Taia Morley Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2025 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Lauren Kasiarz   Buy at Bookshop.org A young boy in Mexico visits his grandmother, Abuela, to make bourekas. When she speaks to him in a language he doesn’t understand, she calls it their “secret language.” He learns that this language is Ladino, the language spoken by Jews long ago in Spain and Portugal. As he and Abuela make bourekas, she teaches him the Ladino words for the foods they are cooking. As the story progresses, the young boy resolves to learn to speak the "secret language" with his grandmother.  This quiet story brings a vibrancy to the love between an abuela and her grandchild, and the history of this endangered language, though there are a few confusing elements. The text transitions from past (“it is a language once spoken by Jews”) to present (“they cook, sing, and even dream in Ladino”) when describin...

The Trouble with Secrets by Naomi Milliner Quill Tree Books (imprint of HarperCollins), 2025 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Jacqueline Jules   Buy at Bookshop.org   The Trouble With Secrets begins with a short chapter called NOW. Becky, the twelve-year-old narrator, is looking for a dress to wear to a funeral, so the reader knows from the first page that someone who appears to be a family member has died. The following section begins a series of chapters from BEFORE. In this part, we meet Becky’s family, especially her older sister Sara, who Becky describes as someone “who would be there for me, no matter what.”    Sara is a vivacious high school senior looking forward to studying musical theater in college. When Sara obtains a lead role in her high school production of Les Misérables, Becky is thrilled. In turn, Sara is delighted when Becky is offered a chance to try out for the All-County Honors Band as a flutist. Unfortunately, Becky’s father objects to an extra...

More Than Enough by Richard Michelson, illustrated by Joe Cepeda Peachtree Publishing (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2025 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Judy Ehrenstein   Buy at Bookshop.org   Moses’s neighborhood is filled with a rainbow of brown faces, including his own, where poverty, unemployment, and homelessness are not unknown. Even Moses’s own family counts its pennies; getting brand new high tops for his birthday is a rare treat. Yet Mom says there is always enough to share with others who have even less, and months later, the man they helped is now working at the barber shop with a new lease on life. As the seasons pass, more help is extended through the neighborhood and more lives are changed. By story’s end, Moses passes on the lesson to his friend Noah: “it feels better to help than to need help. And little enough is more than enough to share.” Accessible and not preachy, this book will be of value to many, Jewish and not. Cepeda’s illustrations employ deep...