The Sydney Taylor Shmooze

Alias Anna: A True Story of Outwitting the Nazis by Susan Hood with Greg Dawson Harper (imprint of HarperCollins Publishers), 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Karin Fisher-Golton Buy at Bookshop.org Among its many strong attributes, Alias Anna is a tribute to the power of girls. A modern girl’s bold and caring question leads to her grandmother sharing a story she had kept inside for decades. And the protagonist, Zhanna, and her sister Frina’s talents and resourceful choices help them survive Holodomor (the Stalin-contrived Ukrainian famine), local antisemitism, and the Holocaust. Despite having very different personalities, both sisters love music and piano from a young age. They become the two youngest scholarship recipients at the Kharkov Conservatory of Music. While their musical talents contribute to their survival, their notoriety as performers creates obstacles as well. Susan Hood adapted Greg Dawson’s extensive interviews and projects for adults to portray Dawson’s mother’

I Will Protect You: A True Story of Twins Who Survived Auschwitz by Eva Mozes Kor with Danica Davidson Little, Brown & Company, 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Stacey Rattner Buy at Bookshop.org I Will Protect You is the raw, tough true story of Romanian identical twins Eva and Miriam, told from young Eva’s point of view. “We were two girls against the Nazi regime,” she writes early on, vowing to make it through. The book is bitterly honest and descriptive and yet completely appropriate for middle grade readers. “The scariest stories Mama had told me before bed were nothing compared to the scary reality we were living in.” The late Eva Mozes Kor’s words told through Danica Davidson’s writing make it easy to share, remember and never forget this scary story. At Auschwitz, Eva and Miriam are separated from the rest of their family and are selected to be subjects for Dr. Mengele’s twin experiments. Powerful Dr. Mengele, who invoked fear in the SS guards, was someone that Eva wo

Blips on a Screen: How Ralph Baer Invented TV Video Gaming and Launched a Worldwide Obsession by Kate Hannigan, illustrated by Zachariah Ohora Alfred A. Knopf (imprint of Penguin Random House), 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Dena Bach Buy at Bookshop.org “Rudolph ‘Rolf’ Baer loved games.” That is the beginning and the essence of the story of the life Ralph Baer, the inventor of the first video gaming system. He and his sister Ilse had enjoyed a typical childhood in Cologne, Germany, of friends, school, and games. Then when Baer was 10 years old, Hitler came to power and everything changed. He and his family managed to escape Germany weeks before the borders closed, eventually arriving in America, changing the children’s names to the less German sounding Ralph and Jane.  There Ralph began working in various industries, from a leather factory to radio repair to designing televisions to military electronics. All this job experience combined to give him the knowledge to do what he

Can Sophie Change the World? by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, illustrated by Aura Lewis Chronicle Books, 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Linda Elovitz Marshall Buy at Bookshop.org In Can Sophie Change the World? by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, Grandpop asks Sophie for one thing for his birthday – he wants HER to change the world! Worried but undaunted, Sophie gets to work. She waters plants, returns dropped stuffed animals, shares puppets, and teaches a clapping song. She does mitzvah (good deed) after mitzvah in a community of diverse people. But Sophie doesn’t feel her efforts work… until Grandpop explains that she is making the world a better place. Sophie realizes that, mitzvah by mitzvah, she’s changing the world. This sweet story about kindness teaches the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) and demonstrates how everyone can help make our world a better place. Charmingly retro garden-inspired illustrations by Aura Lewis make Sophie’s story even sweeter. With its dive

If I Swam With Jonah by Pamela Moritz, illustrated by MacKenzie Haley Apples & Honey Press (imprint of Behrman House Publishing), 2022 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org The story of the minor prophet Jonah, as contained in the biblical Book of Jonah, is in many ways a troubling tale with an ambiguous ending which finds Jonah having learned only modestly from his experience. It's read in synagogues often on Yom Kippur. In IF I SWAM WITH JONAH, author Moritz and illustrator Haley find a nifty way to bring the Jonah story to young children, in a rhyming text that creates a midrash. Moritz's cleverness is to impart the tale in the first person voice of a boy who talks to his beloved pet about a fish way bigger than the goldfish, the one that swallows Jonah when he did not want to assist the people of Nineveh as God commanded. Wisely omitted is the textual reason for Jonah's reluctance -- that Nineveh was just about the most wicked place o

The Ghosts of Rose Hill by R.M. Romero Peachtree Teen, 2022 Category: Young Adult Reviewer: Evonne Marzouk Buy at Bookshop.org The Ghosts of Rose Hill is a beautiful and magical story, told in verse that is as entrancing as the tale itself. Ilana’s parents, immigrants from Cuba and Prague, are desperate for her to be successful in America. So when her grades slip and PSAT scores don’t meet the goal, Ilana is sent from her home in Miami to live with her aunt in Prague for the summer. Away from her violin, parties, and her friends, her parents hope she’ll be able to focus better on studying and improving her test scores. Instead, when Ilana discovers an overgrown Jewish cemetery behind her aunt’s cottage on Rose Hill, her summer becomes about clearing the cemetery… and though her aunt warns her not to speak to them, the ghosts she meets there. Benjamin, with blue eyes like the sea, befriends Ilana while she cares for the cemetery and shows her the secrets of Prague. Pearl is a young chi

The Button Box by Bridget Hodder & Fawzia Gilani-Williams Kar-Ben Publishing (imprint of Lerner Publishing Group), 2022 Category: Middle Grade Reviewer: Rachel J. Fremmer Buy at Bookshop.org When Granny Buena shows her grandchildren (Jewish Ava and her Muslim cousin Nadeem) the family button box, they have no idea that the buttons within it are magic. After they touch a special button, they travel in time and space to 8th century Morocco, where they meet their ancestors and help a Muslim prince get to safety in Spain. As Ava and Nadeem learn about daily life in medieval Morocco, including the trade in herbal remedies and spices and the meals, the reader learns about them too. Helpful back matter includes a glossary and an authors’ note explaining who Sephardic Jews are, explaining which parts of the book are true and which merely based on fact, and encouraging children to speak up against antisemitism and Islamophobia. This reviewer found the book’s focus on commonalities in the Mu