The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

The Sydney Taylor Shmooze won’t be very shmoozy if we only talk to ourselves. What we’re looking for is a lot more voices and perspectives. What we need is reviewers. A review on a mock award blog is a little different than one in a review journal. The main focus is on how or if the book meets the criteria for the award. We currently do not have access to publisher review copies for this blog, so we do ask that reviewers try to locate the books in a local or Judaic library. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in doing, please fill out this form . Many thanks!

The Sydney Taylor Shmooze could have been spelled in a completely different way. It could have been "The Sidney Tailor Schmooze." Why is it spelled the way it's spelled? When Sarah Brenner grew up, she changed her named to Sydney (with two Y's) and married Ralph Taylor (with a Y), becoming Sydney Taylor . S I dney is considered the male variant of the name, while S Y dney is the feminine form. Shmooze is a translation from a Yiddish word for chitchat, meaning there are multiple ways to spell it in English. Some spell it schmooze . Some spell it shmues . We are sure there are many, many more variations. We have decided to use the spelling shmooze for this blog, just to try to keep things simple. You'll notice that the name Sydney Taylor is full of Y's but, unlike Sidney Tailor, has no I's. That fits in very well with the purpose of The Sydney Taylor Shmooze . This blog is not about "I" or any one individual; it's a joint projec

We are delighted to welcome you to The Sydney Taylor Shmooze . We couldn’t be more excited to be starting this blog and to have you as a part of it. Here at the Shmooze , we’ve been following mock award blogs such as Heavy Medal and Calling Caldecott from their infancy. It feels amazing to join the club at last and talk about our favorite topic, Jewish children’s books. Book awards are tricky things. Sometime the most buzzed about books lose. Sometimes obscure books win. Awards are incredibly challenging to predict, no matter how many award committees you’ve been on in the past. Sometimes it’s hard to guess the final result even when you’re in the room. The fun of mock award blogs is they allow for thoughtful discussion of many more titles than those few that will make the final list. They let us think about the criteria , explore the books and find things we didn’t see at first. In the end, it’s okay if we don’t guess the winner. What will matter is being able to share so m