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Channel: Authors – The Whole Megillah

Author’s Notebook | Jumping Over Shadows: A Memoir by Annette Gendler

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“The true story of a German-Jewish love that overcame the burdens of the past.”

Gendler, Annette. Jumping Over Shadows: A Memoir. Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2017. 233 pages, $16.95 list, paperback.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What prompted you to write your memoir?
Annette Gendler (AG):
On my first trip to my grandparents’ hometown in the Czech Republic in 2002, I felt so many undercurrents that I could only sort out by writing. I have always been conscious of the presence of the past in our lives. The memories we inherited, that are not our own, shape our lives. The more we understand where these memories came from, the more meaning we find in our own lives. That town felt so familiar to me even though I had never been there before, and so I set out to piece that past together that had been so influential on my life and my husband’s.

Annette Gendler

TWM: What were the challenges?
AG: Writing my own love story was the hardest thing about writing Jumping Over Shadows. Not so much in terms of conceiving of Harry or myself as characters — I’d done that before in shorter pieces of memoir and in personal essays — but how do you write your own love story without being soppy? It was challenging to convey the subtle feelings between two people. I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly how I managed it, but whatever I did, it seems to have worked because so many readers see the book as a love story.

TWM: How did a fellowship with VCCA help? Your time in the Oak Park attic? (I love Oak Park!)

AG: I wrote the first draft of the second part of the book, namely my own love story, during my first residency at the VCCA. My children were still young then, and without that two-week residency, I don’t think I could have written that draft, or if I had, it would have taken much longer. Sequestered at the VCCA, I could live with the book I was trying to write, and I think this is necessary for any larger work. You have to inhabit its world, and that is not possible in a household full of kids. During those two weeks, I didn’t have to worry about feeding myself, let alone others, or running a household, or dealing with my day job. At meal times, I was surrounded by other writers and artists, and I found it inspiring that we were all diligently pursuing our own projects. I met one of my best friends there, a visual artist, who has a similar background. We later even did an event together.

By 2014/15, when I was writer-in-residence at the Hemingway Birthplace Home in Oak Park (Illinois), the manuscript was done, or so I thought. I spent most of my time in that drafty attic studio researching agents and publishing houses, and submitting the manuscript. It honestly was a frustrating time as a writer. Eventually, through the interaction with one editor, I realized another rewrite was necessary. I accomplished that rewrite over the summer of 2015 working at the Writers WorkSpace in Chicago, which sadly had to close last year due to the pandemic.

TWM: One of the things that struck me was the fluidity of borders and nationalities. Did you grapple with that during the writing process?
AG: Not in terms of myself but in terms of the audience. I grew up in what was then “West” Germany, and thanks to my grandmother’s stories and studying history, I was very aware of the shifting borders of Europe in the 20th century. Growing up during the Cold War, the threat of another shift in borders was real and came to fruition in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. While I was writing, I often referred to maps. I even included one in the book to make it easier for readers to grasp the geographic situation. Nevertheless, just as with the historical context, I aimed to provide just enough detail on locations and borders so readers wouldn’t get lost, but I was careful not to overdo it, as that can easily get boring and distract from the story.

TWM: At what point did you realize you needed to return to Europe for onsite research?
AG: I finished the first draft of the manuscript in 2008, meaning I had written everything I could about the story of the past as well as my own story of the present. I knew where I had holes in the narrative and needed more information. Back then, my mother-in-law was still alive, and we were going to Germany every summer. So in June 2009 I took a side trip to Liberec (formerly Reichenberg) in the Czech Republic to do my research. I arrived with a list of locations to visit, such as the crematorium, where I found the family grave. I also visited the public library there and read their collection of newspapers from 1938, which helped me render that time in the book. That 2009 visit became the last chapter in Jumping Over Shadows.

I am happy to offer a bonus to your readers, namely the chapter Hitler’s Visit (click to download) that was ultimately cut from the book. It is entirely based on my onsite research, and my grandmother’s story of walking down the street to go see Hitler.

TWM: How long did the actual writing process take?
AG: That’s hard to say because I didn’t work on it continuously, and it’s difficult to pinpoint the beginning. The story of my great-aunt and grandparents has its origin in my MFA thesis, which I completed in 2007. The very first essays in that collection go back to 2005. I consider the origin of the book to be a remark by one of my MFA thesis advisors, who urged me to write my own story, because “the story of the past is only interesting in as far as it resonates in the present.” I thought the manuscript was done in 2012 but when I couldn’t find a home for it, I did another rewrite in 2015. It was published in 2017. So you could say it took me ten years, on and off. I am, however, very happy with the end product, and I think that is crucial.

TWM: Which authors inspire you?
AG: I find authors inspiring who take me on a quest, however nutty it might be, and who also manage to share the stories of others while they share their own. Quite often, they are experts in another field, like Edmund De Waal, who’s really an amazing ceramic artist. I greatly admire his The Hare with Amber Eyes for its span of centuries, countries, continents and familial ties. I just finished Owls of the Eastern Ice, written by ornithologist Jonathan Slaght—I did not want that book to end! He made me interested in fish owls and their habitat, and I’m not an animal person. That is gifted writing!

Peter Hessler is a writer whose work I’ll read, just because he wrote it. I discovered him before I traveled to China, and I read all of his books about China before and after traveling there. I feel I saw and experienced way more of China than I physically did myself thanks to his memoirs. Ted Kooser has always been a great example for me because he managed to have a career in insurance while also becoming poet laureate of the United States. I love his quotidian poetry, but I love his book of essays Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps even more. I reread it every year, and I always feel it makes me see.

In terms of storytelling in memoir, Frank McCourt is my favorite. Even though Angela’s Ashes could be a singularly depressing story of a family’s descent into abject poverty, which it is, his storytelling is so powerful that so many episodes from that book have stuck in my mind. After reading Angela’s Ashes, I will always see a soft-boiled egg as a gift of food to be savored.

For more about Annette Gendler, visit her website and check out her other work.


Author’s Notebook | The Woodcarver’s Daughter by Yona Zeldis McDonough

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McDonough, Yona Zeldis. The Woodcarver’s Daughter. Kar-Ben, April 2021, 128 pp.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What inspired you to write The Woodcarver’s Daughter?
Yona Zeldis McDonough (YZM): I had gone to the Museum of American Folk Art to see a show of carved carousel animals—mostly horses. Because the museum has a mission to promote the work of women—particularly unsigned, unattributed work, like embroidery, quilts, rugs etc.—there was a wall note to explain why there were no women carvers included in the exhibition. The answer was that girls were not allowed to join the guild, and so would have been unable to gain the necessary experience, tools and materials to become woodcarvers. Well! When I read that, Batya, the main character, came bounding into my mind, wanting to tell me her story.

Yona Zeldis McDonough

TWM: What was your research process?
YZM: I did research about how Eastern European woodcarvers, many of whom were Jews and who worked on synagogues, bimas, Torah scrolls and the like, were hounded of their homes by pogroms and other forms of anti-Semitism and then reinvented themselves in a secular context in America. I also read about the Golden Age of Carousels, and the importance of the carousel in American leisure life, as well as the factories that produced them.

TWM: What was your greatest challenge?
YZM: Some books are harder to write, and kind of resist their own creation. This was not one of them. But I did have a hard time finding a publisher—I was told that it was “lovely,” “ moving,” “original” and “touching,” but also that it was too quiet and dealt with a historical period that was not especially popular. Yet I felt strongly enough about this particular manuscript to keep trying. Moral of the story: persist!

TWM: Greatest satisfaction?
YZM: Reading the book when it’s all finished and between two covers and thinking, now this is a book I would have loved when I was young.

TWM: Was the process in writing this story different from writing your other novels for young readers?
YZM: Not really. I feel like the nine-year-old girl who loved and devoured books is still alive and well in me, and it’s that girl I channel when I’m writing for kids.

TWM: Who inspires you?
YZM: I turn a lot to the past—stories that moved me when I was a young reader. Interestingly enough, they were stories that took place in earlier times—I had a taste for the by-gone days even then. Some favorites include Anne of Green Gables, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Little Princess, Understood Betsy. I read these books again and again—they were like old friends, and I was always happy to spend time with them.

TWM: How do you receive feedback on your manuscript? For instance, do you participate in a writers’ group?
YZM: No, but I do have a few trusted readers with whom I share manuscripts while they are in progress.

TWM: Do you have an agent?
YZM: Yes, I do have a wonderful agent, Susanna Einstein, and she has been enormously helpful in an editorial capacity as well as in finding great homes for my work.

Author’s Notebook | The Singer and the Scientist by Lisa Rose

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Rose, Lisa. The Singer and the Scientist. Illustr. Isabel Muñoz. Kar-Ben, April 2021, 32 pp.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): I’m going to start with a set of bundled questions: How did you find this story about Marian’s performance at McCarter Theatre? How did you conduct research for this book? What was your greatest challenge in writing this book? Greatest satisfaction? How do you envision this book being used in the classroom? Is there a teacher’s guide? What do you want teachers, parents, and kids to take away from this story?

Lisa Rose (LR): Most of my teaching career has been in urban areas with African American students. I discovered many similarities between our two cultures. Because of this I was very interested in stories of Black and Jewish friendships and alliances. I read that Albert Einstein would teach at historically black colleges which led me to discover this story. Einstein’s sources were well documented. However, Marian Anderson’s own biography tells the story in a different way. In her biography, it is stated that it was prearranged that she would stay with Einstein. This was the most challenging thing about the story—I had “alternative facts” and had to evaluate all the information given for its validity. My conclusions: This event was embarrassing for Marian and her book was written pre-civil rights era. Marian was a reluctant activist. She would have downplayed the conflict.

This story was almost published by a different publisher, but they didn’t want the risk of an alternative version of the story. So, for myself mostly, I used all my skills from watching Law & Order to prove the Einstein version of the story was correct, then I presented my findings to Marian Anderson’s estate. Her estate certified that my version was the true version of the story. Years later, I submitted this story to Kar-Ben, the editor loved it and was satisfied with my research.

Racism and anti-semitism are challenging topics. A teacher’s guide is posted on my website. It will help parents and teachers start the conversation. But mostly this story is about friendship. I think it is important for kids to see they can have friends that look different and belong to different cultures. However, they can still have so much in common. For Einstein and Marian, they both loved music

Books with Jewish culture often have been left out of the diversity discussion. Yet, anti-semitism is rising in the U.S. Thus, I believe it is important that books about Jewish culture are included in diverse literature because through representation a greater understanding and empathy is formed. The Singer and The Scientist has what I would label as casual diversity. The book depicts a bit about Jewish life, but it is not only about a Jewish subject matter. This book is for all people.

TWM: Who inspires you?

LR: When you are a writer, you are a writer all the time. You get ideas from everywhere. You have to keep your “play mind” alert and alive. It has been challenging during this pandemic. However, I challenged myself to write funny, silly stories during this time to keep up my writing and personal well-being.

TWM: Do you have a writers’ group?

LR: I have long term critique partners. We trade stories whenever we need help. It works better with working, raising kids, etc. Sometimes, you can get more done than others. It always evens out in the end.

TWM: What advice do you have for those who seek to write about antisemitism and racism?

LR: Always tell the truth. If said in a developmentally appropriate way, they can handle it. Don’t give them BS—kids can detect that right away.

Author’s Notebook | Eva and Eve by Julie Metz

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Metz, Julie. Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind. Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2021, 314 pp.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What inspired you to write this memoir?
Julie Metz (JM): Shortly after my mother Eve died, I found a keepsake book she’d kept hidden in a drawer for over five decades. No one in our family had ever seen it, not even my father. In this book, my mother was Eva. The pages, filled with inscriptions from friends, family, and teachers, offered clues to a secret pain my mother had carried as a survivor and refugee who left everything she knew behind in Vienna to make a new life in New York City. At first, I thought I would do some family research for myself, but soon enough it became an obsession. Then, as our national politics swung towards anti-immigration fervor, similar to what had been going on when my mother’s family and countless other Jewish families were seeking refuge in the United States, I saw that my mother’s story was part of a larger history of war and immigration and resilience. I kept the keepsake book close to me, a reminder to keep looking.

TWM: What were the challenges?
JM: As I began this project, I wondered what I would still be able to find so many years later. I had no training as a historian or reporter, just my own curiosity to follow. Readers have described my first book as a personal detective story, so I took heart from that and took baby steps into the past. One obstacle was that my German language abilities are mostly limited to ordering food and asking for directions.

Photo courtesy Shannon Greer

TWM: What were the satisfactions?
JM: I discovered to my amazement—and relief!—that there are huge numbers of historians researching every aspect of Jewish culture in Vienna before the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria into the German Empire in March 1938) and during the Nazi occupation. These historians were incredibly generous with their time and resources. I could not have completed my book without their help. Along the way, I visited Vienna twice and began to feel more at home there, in part because I now have contacts. To honor our mother, my brother and I decided to apply for Austrian citizenship under a new law that went into effect in September of 2020. For our family this would be an acknowledgement of past losses and a long-overdue restitution.

TWM: Were there any surprises?
JM: The first surprise was finding documents that had been in our family apartment all along. I cannot fully explain why I hadn’t noticed them before. These included photographs of my grandfather and his best friend hiking (a theme in Eva and Eve), my grandmother’s membership card in the Austrian Jewish mountain climbing club and other papers that all together helped me visualize a lost world. Then more surprises started to pile on. Without revealing too much about the story, I met people via the internet who changed the course of the story in dramatic ways. Serendipity is an understatement. I had worked hard to open the door a crack and then, through so many fortunate connections, it swung wide open.

TWM: You used a particular convention of “In a photo that does exist” and “In a photo that does not exist.” Can you talk about that? Where did this come from?
JM: I’d dived deep into research and the photos I studied painted a picture of how the family lived before the war. But there were still narrative holes I couldn’t fill and there was no one left to tell me what happened between March 1938—when Hitler arrived in Vienna—and March 25, 1940, when my mother and her parents left Vienna. I wanted to understand and feel everything. How did Jews find food? What happened if they needed medical care? How did they stay warm through two exceptionally harsh winters when coal and food were rationed? I used my grandparents’ passports to create a time line and read widely to get a sense of how Jews survived under occupation. One day, while searching for a way to fill those narrative holes, it occurred to me that since I had relied on photographs to describe my family’s world, I might be able to use my imagination to create other scenes as long as I let my reader know what I was doing. The repetition of the phrases became my cue to my readers.

TWM: What is your writing process?
JM: I wish I could say that I have an organized method! I try to set the stage for success by doing some research first. I spent a day reading about women’s undergarments from 1920. Other days were devoted to the pharmaceutical industry, the Italian ship lines, For Eva and Eve, I wrote up chapters as I uncovered new material. I wrote until I hit a wall where I needed more information, and then I did exploration so that I could return to my pages with confidence. This toggling back and forth, it’s a bit of a dance. The final structure—alternating between present and past, reporter narrator and recreation of an earlier time—evolved from my actual experience of discovery. But I’d be lying if I said it was a smooth path from beginning to end. I want to believe that frustration, confusion, and even despair is part of the creative process. But after two books, I feel more patient with this process. As I begin work on a new project that will also have a historical setting, I am once again moving between research and drafting pages. To fight off anxiety (ever-present!) I remind myself that it is just a draft. For me, a first draft is like underpainting on a canvas, a necessary step on the road to editing and revision, which is where the good stuff happens. You might never see those early layers in a finished painting, but they are there, supporting all the work that happens later.

TWM: Do you have a writer’s group?
JM: At the moment I work on my own but I have a select group of friends and colleagues who read early drafts. I’ve been searching for a writer’s group near where I live in the Hudson Valley, so maybe that will happen this year.

TWM: What writers inspire you?
JM: I read widely, fiction and non-fiction, classics and contemporary. Right now, I’m reading The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard. It’s the kind of book where you re-read pages just to admire the writing. Every year I re-read an E.M Forster or Jane Austen novel. I read as many novels as I can; they teach me so much about writing non-fiction. Rachel Cusk, Anthony Doerr, Jesmyn Ward, Mohsin Hamid, Emily St John Mandel, Ali Smith, Kate Atkinson—to name a few—I admire their unique approaches to style and storytelling. During my research and writing for Eva and Eve, I focused on books about World War I, the interwar period, and the Holocaust. I especially loved Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes, Frederic Morton’s Thunder at Twilight, Bart van Es’s The Cut Out Girl, Ariana Neumann’s When Time Stopped, and George Prochnik’s The Impossible Exile: Stephan Zweig at the End of the World. I think Sarah Churchwell’s Behold America: The Entangled History of “American First” and “The American Dream” should be required reading for all Americans. I was blown away by Elisabeth Asbrink’s 1947, Eric Vuillard’s The Order of the Day, and Jan Morris’s Trieste. I also loved Elizabeth Rosner’s Survivor Café and Sarah Wildman’s Paper Love. And why isn’t Erich Maria Remarque’s The Night in Lisbon read as often as his All Quiet on the Western Front?

TWM: What advice do you have for aspiring memoirists?
JM: I try hard to listen to my voice: the words I enjoy using, my own quirky way of speaking and telling stories. In the end I truly believe that readers may pick up a memoir because the opening paragraph promises to keep pages turning, but they will stay to the end if you offer the gift of your unique voice. This requires honesty and authenticity. There will be so many moments when you have an urge to revise the plot of your life, and find that happy resolution. But real life is messy and so the challenge is to wrestle with all that messiness and find a way to shape your story without sanitizing it. A great memoir tells a unique story, with a universal message, in an inimitable voice. In the end these are the elements readers will remember—but especially your voice.

For more about Julie Metz, visit her website.

Two-in-One Author’s Notebook | Hannah G. Solomon Dared to Make a Difference with Author Bonnie Lindauer and Illustrator Sofia Moore

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Lindauer, Bonnie. Hannah G. Solomon Dared to Make a Difference. Illustrated by Sofia Moore. Minneapolis: Kar-Ben, 2021.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): Welcome, Bonnie Lindauer and Sofia Moore! Bonnie, let’s start with you. What inspired you to write about Hannah G. Solomon?
Bonnie Lindauer (BL): As a member of the San Francisco section of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), I’ve attended over several years the awards luncheon and listened to the accomplishments recited for each year’s winner of the Hannah G. Solomon award. The service to their communities that these women provide is truly amazing. I am so impressed by how the NCJW promotes and supports the social justice work that it does. Also, after I read a history of our SF section, I became more and more interested in the life of our founder, Hannah G. Solomon.

TWM: What were your greatest challenges in writing this book?
BL: The greatest challenge for me was having too much information about Hannah’s life and having to find ways to present only the most salient parts for children. I revised the manuscript at least seven times, each time cutting out sections and reorganizing it.

TWM: What were your greatest satisfactions?
BL: I suppose the greatest of all was having the manuscript accepted by Joni Sussman of Kar-Ben Publishing. But my elation about having it accepted soon faced the reality of still needing to do a bit more revising. Tied for the greatest satisfaction was seeing how the manuscript came to life with the sketches, and later, stunning illustrations by Sofia Moore. Finally, I continue to get satisfaction from readers who tell me they so enjoy the book, especially my NCJW colleagues who are so happy to finally have a book published about their founder. Now, the way is paved for someone to write an adult biography of Hannah G. Solomon.

Author Bonnie Lindauer

TWM: Please describe your research process.
BL: As a retired academic research librarian, I’m sometimes disadvantaged by researching and collecting too much information. For this book, I was so fortunate to find her autobiography freely available on the web. Her autobiography is very detailed and gave me a sense of her personality and motivation. I highlighted sections of it that I knew I wanted to have in my book and took notes. I’m aware that sometimes a person writing an autobiography much later in life (she wrote it when she was 85), may not recall as precisely, or may have a different perspective on an earlier period, so I consulted other sources, primarily from the Jewish Women’s Archive and several magazine articles about her. I also researched the history of Chicago during the period she lived and was most active. I recall how helpful was a source I found about what it was like for immigrants living in the shoddy, poor section of Chicago where Hannah and other women from NCJW provided services. I was somewhat disappointed that the editorial staff at Kar-Ben did not include my selected list of sources in the back matter.

TWM: Who inspires you to write? Who do you like to read?
BL:
I guess I inspire myself to write because I have such a long list of ideas for books. I so much love reading picture books and middle-grade novels that I find myself somewhat driven to write. It’s been a slow process over eight years to learn more about writing for young children. I still struggle with finding my voice.

I read fiction and non-fiction picture books and middle grade novels, along with adult fiction and non-fiction. Some of the children’s writers I most admire are Deborah Underwood, Mo Willems, Lisa Wheeler, Melissa Stewart, Samantha Berger, and Julie Fogilano. For adult fiction and non-fiction, I’m very eclectic and don’t really have very many favorite authors, although I do admire and read the work of Sholem Aleichem, Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, Alice Hoffman, Cynthia Ozick, and Nathan Englander.

TWM: What’s next for you?
BL: I’m working on a children’s graphic novel and also picture book biography of Laura Margolis, known as the “savior of Shanghai.” She was an adventurous social worker for the Joint Distribution Committee pre- and post-World War II. She was instrumental in saving the lives of thousands of Jewish refugees in Shanghai during WW II, as well as serving in several European locations. She was part of two historic events — the MS St. Louis ship turned away from landing in Cuba with nearly1,000 European Jews and the 1947 Exodus ship turned away from landing in Haifa. I’m also working on polishing several narrative non-fiction picture books.

TWM: Thanks so much, Bonnie! Now, let’s turn to illustrator Sofia Moore. What strategies did you use to translate Bonnie’s text to illustration?
Sofia Moore (SM):
Because this book is a biography I wanted the illustrations look as a continuation of the narrative with the ability to show important historical details. The research part was the most fun for me, I loved looking for the period fashion, architecture and details of Hanna’s everyday life. Bonnie did a great job pacing the story the way it was easy for me to start imagining how the images would follow the text and what should be in focus on each page.

TWM: What medium did you use?
SM:
I painted on paper using ink and acrylic paints and then finished in Photoshop, adding small details and adjusting colors.

Illustrator Sofia Moore

TWM: How did you decide on illustration placement?
SM:
The placement was given to me by an art director in most cases, but when I had something different in mind, the team that worked with me was very flexible and
I had freedom to make changes.

TWM: Please describe your research process.
SM:
I created a Pinterest board where I collected images of late 1800s Chicago, architecture, clothing details, photographs of immigrant families of that time. Great source of
information came from Hannah’s autobiography, The Fabric of My Life, that I found online and gave me so many ideas of how to illustrate Hannah for children. Her big loving family,
passion to help other people, her strong leadership nature was great inspiration.

2022 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour | Final Stop

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2022-STBA-Blog-Tour-768x644

You’ve now come to the final stop along the 2022 Sydney Taylor Book Award blog tour, the culmination of a full week of insightful and inspiring award-winning author and illustrator interviews.

Read about the blog tour and all 2022 Sydney Taylor Book Award blog posts.

The wrap-up and virtual roundtable

Imagine, if you will, a Zoom gallery filled with award winners poised to answer questions from the press. We have nine participants from among the gold and silver medalists:

Sydney Taylor Book Awards

  • Picture Book—Author Susan Kusel and illustrator Sean Rubin for The Passover Guest
  • Middle Grade—Author Veera Hiranandani for How to Find What You’re Not Looking For
  • Young Adult—Author Aden Polydoros for The City Beautiful

Sydney Taylor Honor Books

Picture Book

  • Author Nancy Churnin and illustrator Bethany Stancliffe for Dear Mr. Dickens
  • Author Jeff Gottesfeld and illustrator Michelle Laurentia Agatha for The Christmas Mitzvah
  • Author/illustrator Peter Sis for Nicky & Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued

Middle Grade 

  • Author Gordon Korman for Linked
  • Author/illustrator Eugene Yelchin for The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

Young Adult

  • Author E. Lockhart and illustrator Manuel Preitano for Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero
  • Author Hannah Reynolds for The Summer of Lost Letters
  • Author Leah Scheier for The Last Words We Said

There’s so much to talk about!

We begin…

The Whole Megillah (TWM): Thank you all for joining us today and congratulations on your great achievement. Let’s just dive right in. What are your recommendations for great Jewish kids lit?

Aden Polydoros_Headshot (Photo Credit- Melanie Elise Photography, LLC)Aden Polydoros: I recently had the pleasure of reading two Jewish fantasy novels—A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft and The Ghosts of Rose Hill by R.M. Romero, and am deeply looking forward to From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos. (Photo courtesy Melanie Elise Photography, LLC)

peter sisPeter Sis: Red and Green-Blue and White, Lee Wind and Paul O. Zelinsky

ELockhartAboutMeE. Lockhart: For YA readers, I adore Ken Krimstein’s When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers. It’s stunning and moving graphic nonfiction—touching and relatable. For younger people, I’m a big fan of Erica S. Perl. Her middle-grade work, like All Three Stooges, is funny and sad and complex. Her picture books make kids fall over laughing. Chicken Butt! is my favorite. Ooh! And Sarah Mlynowski! Amazing hilarious middle-grade—the kids in her bestselling Whatever After series are Jewish, and her YA book Just a Boy and a Girl in a Little Canoe is set at an historically Jewish summer camp.

hannah reynolds

Hannah Reynolds: I’m so glad there are now so many more options that there were when I was growing up! To recommend other books in the young adult romantic comedy sphere (which I write in) I suggest As If on Cue by Marisa Kanter; Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler; and We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon.

TWM: What trends do you see coming our way?

jeff gottesfeldJeff Gottesfeld: I continue to see more Jewish kidlit that is representative of the vast sweep of our people around the world. I hope that they are embraced as the crucial stories that they are, because we’ve got a long and varied history, and as equally promising a future. I suspect that we are going to see some of these books will also stress that no matter where in the world one is a Jew—the USA, Israel, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, France, Tajikistan, wherever, that person is connected to all other Jews, everywhere. That is a rare and sacred bond.

eugene yelchinEugene Yelchin: Last week, Chicago Tribune ran an opinion piece by Liza Lerner entitled, “Jews Belong in a Conversation About Racism,” in which she describes reading The Genius Under the Table with her eight-year-old daughter. When they come across a scene in which a plainclothes policeman insults the members of my family, Lerner’s daughter couldn’t understand how the antisemitic policeman knew that we were Jewish. The reason for the confusion, Lerner suggests, is the exclusion of antisemitism from the public discourse on racism in the United States. Lerner writes, “To defeat hate and racism, we cannot perpetually engage in comparative oppression—who has it worse? Whose experience counts? Antisemitism is alive and well, and it’s thriving in today’s America… So few are speaking out for us, but worse, few of us are speaking out for ourselves.” Lerner’s article feels convincing and timely. I cannot predict what trends are coming our way, but I hope a trend would emerge to encourage American Jewish authors to write candidly about antisemitism for all ages, including young readers.

Sis: I hope to see more books celebrating freedom, democracy and unity.

Lockhart: In terms of Jewish superheroes, I love seeing Arsenic on TV in Runaways. And Harley Quinn becoming a hero rather than a villain. Flash in Justice League, too. There are many Jewish heroes out there in the comics, but we’re starting to see them onscreen with their Jewish identity as an identifiable part of who they are.

Reynolds: We’ve already started to see a lot more variety in the Jewish kidlit being published, and I think that’s only going to increase in the next few years. I expect to see many more romantic comedies, historical fiction outside of the Holocaust, and contemporary fiction exploring different ways of being Jewish. I’m so glad there’s now more types of Jewish stories being told, and I’m excited to read them!

leah scheierLeah Scheier: I hope more books about all kinds of Jews, religious and non-religious alike. My agent, Rena, is representing a book about an Orthodox teen boy. Isaac Blum’s debut novel, The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen, absolutely fantastic. I can’t wait to read it! Besides my book, I’m not aware of any books featuring Orthodox Jewish teenagers in traditionally published YA. So I’m so happy this one is coming out in the spring from Penguin.

TWM: What are your next steps in your literary career?
Yelchin: My next book, a graphic memoir, which will also be published by the Candlewick Press, is a follow-up book to The Genius Under the Table. The second volume, however, is for YA and adult readers since its subject matter, the events leading up to my emigration from the Soviet Union, as well as the narrator’s age, I was 27 at the time, require more mature readership than my usual middle grade readers.

Sis: I am working on a project about immigration, about a little girl who comes to American at the end of the 19th century. I am also thinking about a project on Comenius who was the author of Orbis Pictus (one of the first illustrated children’s books).

nancy churnin 2Nancy Churnin: I have written 10 nonfiction picture books about people who inspire me that I hope will inspire kids to heal the world. I am going to continue to write about people like that—particularly focusing on hidden heroes and heroines like Eliza Davis—but I also want to expand my reach to different age groups. I am proud that I will be making my board book debut with Counting on Shabbat, a Shabbat counting book about kindness, with Joni Sussman at Kar-Ben Publishing in Fall 2023. I have been offered contracts on three more picture books—two for 2023 and one for 2024, but I also have a nonfiction middle grade passion project that I am researching with a Jewish theme. I look forward to making progress on that and then finding a good home for it.

Gottesfeld: I also did a picture book this past year about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier called Twenty-One Steps, which got a fair amount of attention. I’m going to do a couple more books on themes of the American military past and present, over the next couple of years. I’ve also got a title coming about the start of the food bank movement in the world, which is a remarkable story. On the Jewish kidlit front, I’ve got a couple of new manuscripts, but alas I find myself interested in Jewish subjects where we need to beware of a single story as Chimamanda Adichie said, as well as where angels fear to tread, so we’ll see if I can find the right publisher for them.

Lockhart: My novel Family of Liars (prequel to We Were Liars) comes out May 3, 2022.

Reynolds: My next book, Eight Nights of Flirting, comes out on October 25, 2022. It’s a young adult romantic comedy set during Hanukkah, born out of watching many Christmas movies and wishing there was a Jewish equivalent. It’s a standalone book, but there’s overlap with characters and the setting from The Summer of Lost Letters. Shira Barbanel can’t stand Tyler Nelson, but when they get snowed in together for a night, they strike a deal for the holiday season: Tyler will give Shira flirting lessons so she can catch her crush’s attention, if she helps him land an internship.

the city beautifulPolydoros: I actually have a few novels in the work. My dark Slavic fantasy novel, Bone Weaver, comes out in September 2022. While it doesn’t have Jewish representation, it does explore diaspora and religious persecution in a secondary-world fantasy, and the setting is somewhat modeled after the Pale of Settlement. I also have a middle-grade fantasy novel with a queer, Jewish protagonist coming out in Winter 2023, Ring of Solomon, and am currently working on another historical fantasy novel that I hope to have some news for in the coming weeks.

TWM: What insights did you get into Jewish life as you wrote your book? Veeraauthorphoto

Veera Hiranandani: For me, my books are an exploration into some aspect of my identity or family history.  For this story, I wanted to understand more about the choices my parents and grandparents made which are similar to what the parents, Sylvia and Max, and the young couple, Leah and Raj, make in the book. I grew up close to my Jewish grandparents. It was so confusing to me since they were such devoted and loving grandparents, when I found out they had rejected my parents’ marriage at first. The more writing and research I did, I found myself empathizing with all of the characters, understanding why my grandparents felt the way they did, and becoming more connected to my own complex Jewish identity. 

Polydoros: Having been raised in a rather secular interfaith family, I’ve struggled on and off with feeling not Jewish enough. Receiving this honor has been extremely validating, in that it’s further reminded me that I have a place in our community, and that my queer and Jewish identities don’t invalidate each other.

dear mr dickensChurnin: Researching the history of the Jewish community in England gave me insights into the larger significance of Eliza Davis’s letters to Charles Dickens. I was stunned to learn that England had expelled their Jewish population in 1275, more than 200 years before the much better-known expulsion from Spain during the Inquisition in 1492. English law had demanded Jews older than seven wear a large yellow badge of felt shaped like the tablet of the Ten Commandments hundreds of years before the Nazis would require Jews to wear the yellow felt star. Long before people talked about how perception affects action, Eliza Davis realized that the ugly way Jewish people were portrayed in books by writers like Charles Dickens affected how the English community treated Jewish people. Dehumanizing depictions make it easier, psychologically, to justify segregating people and limiting their opportunities to fully and fairly participate in society.

By speaking up, much as Queen Esther spoke up to her king in defense of her people, Eliza made Charles Dickens see the injustice perpetuated by the stereotype of Fagin in Oliver Twist. When Eliza inspired Charles Dickens to create his first kind Jewish character in Mr. Riah in Our Mutual Friend and he spoke up for Jewish people in his magazine, that changed hearts and minds. More just laws followed. As I write in my Author’s Note, it’s hard to imagine that the anti-Semitism that raged in England before Eliza Davis and Charles Dickens would have allowed what happened in 1939—the rescue of thousands of Jewish children through the Kindertransport. Words can change hearts ,minds, and history. As I write in my Author’s Note, “How fortunate we are that Eliza Davis bravely spoke up for justice and that Charles Dickens listened and used his powerful pen to make his readers listen too.”

genius under the tableYelchin: The antisemitism was so deeply imbedded in the Soviet society that it had produced a feeling of shame, inadequacy, and insecurity in most of the Soviet Jews. My family comes from Ukraine, and the memory of the Nazi occupation that claimed the lives of my great-grandparents, the antisemitic purge of 1948-1953, and the antisemitic provocations following the Six Day War, which I describe in the book, created an atmosphere of constant anxiety and fear among us. I was certainly not exempt from those feelings. From the very early age, I too was made to feel less of a human than my Russian peers. When I came to the United States, I was only partially aware of the huge impact the Soviet-style antisemitism had left on my psyche. It took much work to become fully cognizant of it and many years to overcome it. Most of my self-healing materialized in the form of artmaking. In my paintings and my stories, I have been examining my past again and again until my efforts culminated in The Genius Under the Table. Working on that book, I became painfully aware that growing up in the atmosphere of the everyday antisemitism made me take it for granted, as if it was a natural order of things. As a result of that discovery, the ability to recognize and confront hatred and injustice became a major theme in the book.

Sis_Nicky&Vera_frontCoverSis: I grew up in Prague, in Czech Republic. The hero of my book, Nicholas Winton, saved 699 children who left Prague on trains for London. He never talked about it and his name was revealed 50 years later on a TV show.

When I was working on Nicky & Vera, my friend from high school wrote to me that her older sister was one of the children supposed to be on the train but their mother did not have the heart to leave the little girl on the train going into the “unknown.” Shortly after that mother and daughter were deported to the Terezin concentration camp. They survived. My friend who, like me was born after the war, wrote “On plus side, if there were any, the fact my sister did not take her place on the train made it possible for another child to leave—so they both survived but under different conditions”

My friend’s letter and horrors of Holocaust in Prague, where different ethnic groups lived in peaceful democracy until the Nazi takeover in 1939, made the story of Nicky & Vera very palpable.

whistleLockhart: I had researched the history of New York’s Lower East Side for another project, and that knowledge influenced Whistle at every step, because I basically invented a neighborhood in Batman’s Gotham City that mirrors the LES—an historically Jewish neighborhood with a long history and many Jewish-owned businesses. I also spent time thinking about secular Jewish concepts of morality—and how my own path is influenced by it. I wanted my Jewish superhero to be thinking about tikkun olam.

summer of lost lettersReynolds: The Summer of Lost Letters is set on Nantucket, and I wanted to invent a family that had lived there for generations—so I had to create a believable backstory to get them to the island in the early 1800s! I learned all about early Jewish settlers in the US, particularly New England Sephardic communities. I visited the Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI, the oldest standing synagogue in the US (built 1763). I learned about the New Bedford Jewish community, New Bedford being a Massachusetts whaling town with ties to Nantucket. And I learned about Nantucket’s Jewish community as well! It was all a ton of fun (my book is about teens doing historical research, so it’s no surprise I also love doing it).

howtofindTWM: Let’s talk about the award itself. What does the Sydney Taylor award/honor mean to you?
Hiranandani: It means more than I can say. I grew up reading the All- of-a-Kind series and it was one of the few books I read as a child where I could see at least one side of my family background portrayed in a story. My grandparents’ families immigrated to the Lower East Side from Poland and Russia. Even my grandmother’s name was Gertie, just like one of the sisters in the book. I used the books to learn more about the Jewish side of my family. Back then I would have never guessed that one day I’d grow up and win an award in Sydney Taylor’s name!

Polydoros: I hope other authors writing queer, Jewish books will feel emboldened, seeing a queer YA fantasy receive this award, and know that there is a place in publishing for them. As for myself, it’s made me even more determined to write these kinds of stories.

Churnin: Growing up, most of the heroes and heroines in the books I read were not Jewish; sadly I didn’t discover Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family books until I was an adult. They would have made such a difference to me as a kid! I missed having those mirrors. I think that the lack of mirrors may have been one of the reasons I was very private about being Jewish—proud within my family and Jewish community, but private outside that community. The Sydney Taylor Book Awards have done so much good in encouraging and promoting books with Jewish characters and themes for kids. I am so proud that Dear Mr. Dickens will now be providing windows and mirrors for Jewish and non-Jewish children, inspiring them with the true story of a courageous Jewish woman who spoke up to someone in a position of power and persisted until she achieved change. I am thrilled that Dear Mr. Dickens is a Sydney Taylor Honor book, which gives it a spotlight that will encourage it to be seen and read more widely, but also that I have two Sydney Taylor Notables: A Queen to the Rescue, the Story of Henrietta Szold, Founder of Hadassah this year and Irving Berlin, the Immigrant Boy Who Made America Sing in 2019.

christmas mitzvahGottesfeld: I have been a writer for a long time in many genres, including YA, television, and for the stage. But I still feel like a total rookie at picture books, since my first one only came out six years ago. To be in the company of breathtakingly accomplished authors like Peter Sis and Leslie Kimmelman, and to look upward to folks like Jane Yolen and Leslea Newman, is both an affirmation that I am on the right track, and a challenge to get better.

Yelchin: To have written a book that is recognized by the Association of Jewish Libraries as a work that “authentically portrays the Jewish experience” means that perhaps I am on the right track. I have always tried to make my stories about life in the former USSR as authentic and honest as I could possibly make them. Paradoxically, few Soviet Jewish emigres speak out publicly about their experiences in Russia, while many dismiss their unpleasant past as if it has no value for the Americans. I disagree. What we have lived through in the USSR needs to be known to the American readers of all ages so that they could recognize and oppose oppression when they come across it here at home.

Sis: I came to America and American children’s books late in my life. I became an illustrator
almost by chance. I am lucky my wife is American and loves books. So, she told me about her favorites—Sydney Taylor being one of them. I love the fact Sydney Taylor wrote her books for her daughter when living in Lower East Side and so did I when we lived down there where our daughter Madlenka was discovering the neighborhood.

Lockhart: I grew up with Sydney Taylor’s books. My eldest child was obsessed with them. I wrote All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah! I am so grateful to her stories and all they have given me.

Reynolds: I feel incredibly thankful to have received this honor. Abby—the heroine of The Summer of Lost Letters—has a family history similar to my own: granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, who rarely talk about their past. But Abby’s own story is still about bright curiosity and summer romance. Getting this honor award made that story feel validated—it’s okay to have love, humor, and traumatic history exist in the same space. The light can be just as powerful as the dark.

the last words we saidScheier: While the novel is intended for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences alike, I hope the Sydney Taylor Award will bring it to the attention of Jewish educators and librarians and will give Jewish teens the pleasure of seeing their own community respectfully and accurately depicted. Representation is so important, especially now, with the rise in antisemitic speech and attacks in the USA and abroad.

TWM: And now for the final question for today’s discussion: Will anything be different now that your work has been recognized by the Sydney Taylor Book Award?
Hiranandani: When a writer’s work is fortunate enough to be recognized with a prestigious award, it’s extremely personally and professionally validating. You wonder, however, if it means you have a new set of expectations to live up to. Ultimately each new book I write has its own set of challenges and as I work through them, it always brings me back to where I started—trying to write the best story I can in the moment. That’s all anyone can do.

Churnin: Winning a Sydney Taylor Honor for Dear Mr. Dickens makes me feel supported in writing more books with Jewish characters and themes. Dear Mr. Dickens crosses many boundaries, just as the friendship between Eliza Davis and Charles Dickens did. I feel happy that winning this Jewish honor would have been especially gratifying to Eliza. I also love how people who come to the book through their love of Charles Dickens or their respect for the theme of speaking up and persisting, will always be reminded by the Sydney Taylor Honor that this is a story that is most accurately and beautifully seen through a Jewish lens.

Yelchin: Awards are excellent for building confidence in their recipients. They make us bold and decisive, and they discourage our natural desire to please, to entertain, to be polite in our work. One wants to aspire to write a book that has a chance to be banned, a book that jolts us out of our complacency, a book that changes our lives. Writing truthfully requires courage. I don’t know a better recipe for courage in writing than receiving recognition for it. The Sydney Taylor Honor Award gives me courage to continue working and a permission to dig deeper into myself and into my characters.

Sis: I hope more people will get to know the history through this book and take a note.

Lockhart: I don’t know! Maybe! I am very psyched that I get to go to the AJL conference and connect with the amazing community of Jewish librarians and authors.

Reynolds: I hope it means even more readers find their way to The Summer of Lost Letters. Also, I hope it helps readers recognize that Jewish books can be joyful and optimistic. I think those are important emotions for everyone—especially teens—to experience and to see as valid. And I think they’re emotions everyone can use more of these days.

Scheier: Honestly, I can’t get over how beautiful that seal looks on the cover. I can’t stop staring at it! I’ve always gravitated towards books with award seals on the cover, and I’m so honored that now my own book is in that company.

The Whole Megillah thanks each of you for participating in this roundtable discussion and we congratulate all the Gold Medal, Silver Medal, and Notable award winners. Readers, please check out the preceding blog tour and get to know these winners and their works even better—their techniques, their approaches, their inspirations. And thanks to all the wonderful bloggers who volunteered their time and space to interview and give space to honor these Sydney Taylor Book Award winners.

Author’s Notebook | I Will Protect You by Eva Mozes Kor with Danica Davidson

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Kor, Eva Mozes, with Danica Davidson. I Will Protect You: A True Story of Twins Who Survived Auschwitz. New York and Boston: Little Brown, 2022. 226 pp. $17.99

The Whole Megillah (TWM): How did this project come about?

Danica Davidson – Photo by Kaylyn Hite

Danica Davidson (DD): I’d experienced increased antisemitism while working as a journalist in 2015, and I felt a need to write something that could be helpful. So I started to educate myself more on my Jewish heritage, and read a lot of Jewish books and went to see Jewish speakers. One of those speakers was Eva. I introduced myself afterward to try to interview her for a magazine, and mentioned I wrote kids’ books. That was my way of letting her know I was a professional writer and not here to waste her time. But as soon as I dropped that I’d written and published 16 kids’ books, she about leapt out of her chair. She burst out that she wanted to do a kids’ book, because you needed to reach kids to fight antisemitism. She said if you wait till 12 or later to talk about the Holocaust and antisemitism, it’s too late, because the prejudices are set in. I immediately saw how passionate she was about this, and we began discussing how we could do a book.

TWM: What attracted you to it?

DD: The thing that most attracted me (if that’s the right word) was the fact that Eva survived Auschwitz as a child. That’s almost unheard of. Most children were sent to the gas chambers immediately. I knew from my reading that most Holocaust books for kids are about hiding and escaping, not camps, and a lot of Holocaust books for kids are fiction. Eva and I think kids ought to have accessible nonfiction Holocaust books for them as well, so they can learn what happened to real people, as well as reading fiction. Here was an opportunity to describe a true story, and not only a true story, but a true story about Auschwitz to children, because it was from a child’s point-of-view, and so it could be relatable. I’d never met a child survivor of Auschwitz before, and I haven’t met one since. And with child survivors so rare, and with most Holocaust survivors no longer with us, I knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to get this story down on paper.

TWM: How does I Will Protect You differ from Eva Kor’s other book, Echoes of Auschwitz?

DD: Echoes of Auschwitz was an adult book Eva self-published in the 90s. That was before she found healing, and you can hear the anger sizzling off some of the pages in Echoes of Auschwitz. The Eva I met was much calmer, much more even-keel, much more welcoming of people. She had friends in so many different walks of life. It’s not that she never got upset, but that she could actually experience life now instead of being angry all the time. Echoes of Auschwitz reads more like an ethnography project, which is helpful to learn about the Holocaust and her time and place, but I knew it wouldn’t be interesting for kids. To make her story kid-friendly, I found a story arc, put in symbolism, kept chapters short, and kept the pace fast. I Will Protect You is a true story, but it reads like a novel.

Eva Mozes Kor

TWM: What were the challenges and satisfactions of writing this book, working with Eva, and dealing with Eva’s death?

DD: I’d been wanting to write something about antisemitism, and the rough draft poured out of me in three weeks. It was emotionally overpowering and also cathartic to write, because I felt as if I were finally doing something concrete and lasting that could help other Jewish people.

We worked really well together. Eva wrote me at one point, saying, “You understand my thinking.” I think it helped that we were also like-minded because we both have a lot of respect for kids and being open and honest with them. We talked about how when we were kids we couldn’t stand it when adults would shut us out or not explain important things to us.

Eva died just 15 days after we accepted Little, Brown’s offer on the finished manuscript. She was on an education trip to Auschwitz. In the last phone call we had, she said she would help me start promoting our book as soon as she got back. That’s how dedicated she was to getting out a book for children. So that even when I pointed out that was early for promoting a book, she still insisted she would do it.

We got really close in that time together. I miss her so much. I wish she were here with me for this.

TWM: Please describe the process you and Eva used in writing this book.

DD: I interviewed her a lot, mainly over the phone. You can find the general information about her life online, so I asked a lot more specific questions. I also read a lot of kids’ books on heavy subjects to see how they dealt with them. Then I discussed ideas with Eva. Eva knew she wanted a kids’ book, and she really related to kids, but she wasn’t a writer, and she didn’t know how to go about getting her story into an age-appropriate book. So when I got ideas I thought would work, I’d pass them by her. I suggested we open the book with her being bullied at school for being Jewish, because school and bullying are two pretty universal things kids deal with, and it can pull young readers into the story right away without overwhelming them. I knew I didn’t want to open the book at Auschwitz, because that would be too much. I wanted the story to build.

She mentioned her mother telling her the story of Little Red Riding Hood and how much it scared her, and I got excited because of the symbolism I could use with that. Eva was baffled when I tried to explain how we could use that story, as a story within a story. I asked her to trust me on that. Then I started writing the book and sending her chapters at a time. She was thrilled with how they came out, and only ever wanted minor tweaks. She really liked the Little Red Riding Hood angle once she saw it on paper. It got to the point I was writing chapters in a fever dream before she was reading them, so sometimes I’d write new chapters and have to wait a bit before she finished the earlier ones. And by then I was already multiple chapters ahead.

TWM: The narrative incorporates Eva’s voice in two ways: her voice of innocence and her voice of experience. How did you manage the two voices?

DD: I think it came from listening to Eva for weeks. It was intuitive, balancing the voices. I also experienced trauma as a child . . . nothing as bad as Eva did, but when I told her about it, she remarked, “So you also know suffering.” And that seemed to assure her I could tell her story right. As a kindergartner I had lost a close family member to murder, and I know what this does to a child’s psyche and how you grow up with this. Childhood trauma is not theoretical to me. I think that helped me capture Eva’s voices.

TWM: I appreciate the inclusion in the backmatter of an afterword, timeline, and glossary. Was there any discussion of additional sections of backmatter, e.g., a map, for further reading?

DD: We didn’t talk about a map, but I think the glossary and timeline are important because this book might be a child’s introduction to the Holocaust. I wanted them to have more context without overwhelming them. And after Eva died, I wanted to do an afterword so readers could have a better understanding of who she was in her last year, how important this book is to both of us, and what a great loss it was to lose her.

Read the Publishers Weekly article about this book.

Two-in-One Author’s Notebook | A Visit to Moscow with Author Anna Olswanger and Illustrator Yevgenia Nayberg

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Olswanger, Anna. A Visit to Moscow. Illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg. Berkeley, CA: WestMargin Press, 2022, 72 pp.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What prompted the form of a graphic novel for you?

Anna Olswanger (AO): As soon as I entered grade school, I became a comic book reader. Every week I was at our neighborhood pharmacy to see what that’s week’s delivery had brought. I bought every copy of Superman, Supergirl, Batman, Flash, Archie, Millie the Model, Little Lulu, Wonder Woman, any character. As I got older, I lost interest in comics because I began to see the art as flat, both literally and figuratively. There were no shadows, no depth, but I remained enamored of the combination of art and text and I think that’s why I fell in love with picture books as an adult. I always wanted to see fiction for adults published with illustrations, but years ago at a writers’ conference when I asked an editor if any publisher would consider illustrated short stories for adults, the editor curtly replied, “Adults don’t need illustrations.” I remember thinking to myself, “Well, I do.”

It’s been at least 30 years since I heard that editor speak, and the market has evolved. Graphic novels, both for young readers and for adults, contain art that has depth and shadows. Graphic novels are not only acceptable for adults, but are appreciated by reviewers and book buyers, especially librarians. I am glad that A Visit to Moscow could find a home in this format.

TWM: How did you decide on starting the story from Zev’s perspective? (And for point of clarification, which Zev is this? The boy or the brother who perished?)

AO: Zev at the opening is not the brother who died in a concentration camp, but Zev, now an adult, who was the boy in the main section of the book. The book opens just after the moment of the adult’s Zev’s death. He is looking down at the area in Lebanon where he stepped on a land mine and sees the lush landscape— scenes of a cliff, ruins on a rampart, a lake and valley. He thinks he’s looking down from heaven, and then everything starts to disappear. He can’t remember his name or who he was. He hears a voice and follows it. He sees a man (later we realize it is the fictional version of Rabbi Grossman, the rabbi who visited Zev and his family in the Soviet Union) at his Shabbat table with his family. The man is about to tell his family a story, and the story is his meeting Zev and his parents during a visit to Moscow.

It seemed natural to me to start the story from Zev’s perspective because I knew I wanted the ending to be from his perspective, and that the book would circle back.

Anna Olswanger

TWM: Yevgenia, how did your own background affect your illustrations? How did you decide on textless panels?

Yevgenia Nayberg (YN): Many ideas are the result of a collaborative process, and after some time it’s hard to recall how things happened exactly! If I remember correctly, I originally painted one full-page image and the editor suggested including several textless panels throughout the book. I thought it was a great idea because having these panels alters the pace of the story. My favorite panel is the snowy Moscow. The main events of the novel happen in the summer, and the winter panel shows the passage of time without words.

TWM: Anna, what were the satisfactions in writing/illustrating this narrative?

AO: I felt a kind of closure at having written it because originally the story was part of a longer novel for adults that Rabbi Grossman and I began writing in the 1980s. We never finished it. The novel included the episode of Rabbi Grossman visiting the U.S.S.R. and meeting the real-life version of Zev and his family. I thought the episode was deeply meaningful, and because it was the one part of the novel that was based on fact, I was disappointed over the years that the story would never be publicly told. But as graphic novels became more popular, I began to think that the episode could be developed into book-length with added art. And when we—Yevgenia, the editor, and I—were able to accomplish that, I felt a sense of relief that I had done justice to the little boy and Rabbi Grossman.

TWM: The challenges?

AO: Rabbi Grossman died in 2018. All of the rabbis who went on the Rabbinical Council of America trip with him had also died, as had Mrs. Grossman, the rabbi’s wife. So, there was no one to answer the new questions I had about the narrative and setting. I was able to get some everyday details from Soviet Jews who had left the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and of course, Yevgenia brought her own experience to the book as the illustrator, but I had no definitive answers to my questions. I only had the notes I had taken when I interviewed Rabbi Grossman in the early 1980s, and that was already 15 years after his trip. That was why the graphic novel finally had to be called historical fiction, and not a graphic memoir.

TWM: Yevgenia, let’s turn back to you. What were the satisfactions in writing/illustrating this narrative? The challenges?

YN: Finding the right light was the most satisfying part of this project. It is the combination of luminosity and fog that set the visual mood for the story.

The main challenge was to keep the composition dynamic. There’s not much physicality in the story; No one is running. The scenes are usually limited to two to three people. However, there’s a lot of internal action. To be able to show that without resorting to grimaces was quite tricky.

An example of Yevgenia Nayberg’s illustrations

TWM: What advice do you have for those aspiring to write and/or illustrate a graphic novel?

AO: The same advice for those aspiring to write in any format: read widely in the format and try to develop an intuitive feel for what it can encompass. Because graphic novels are so visual, I think authors also have to trust in the skills of the illustrator, the same way that a picture book author has to trust in the skills of the illustrator that an editor brings on board. I know that some authors of graphic novels map out every panel for the illustrator, but I think that is stifling to the illustrator’s creativity. Still, a graphic novel author has to think about the flow of panels, which includes the flow of text and page turns, the same, really, as what picture book authors have to think about. Most important, I think they have to love the format.

YN: I would say, have a clear vision of the atmosphere of the story. Know how to visually slow down and speed up the narrative.

For more about Anna Olswanger, visit her website.

For more about Yevgenia Nayberg, visit her website.


Author’s Notebook | The Boston Chocolate Party by Tami Lehman Wilzig and Rabbi Deborah R. Prinz

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Lehman-Wilzig, Tami, and Rabbi Deborah R. Prinz. The Boston Chocolate Party. Illustr. by Fede Combi. Apples & Honey Press, 2022.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What led you to write about colonial chocolate?
Tami Lehman-Wilzig (TLW): It’s a quirky answer. I’m an advertising copywriter by profession. I read Rabbi Prinz’s book On the Chocolate Trail shortly after it came out in 2013. Once I finished reading the section on Jews and chocolate during the American colonial period, the copywriter in me immediately said “The Boston Chocolate Party.” No story in mind, just if you will, an advertising slogan. But the title never left me. I felt I could do something with it for the children’s PB world once I didn’t have a deadline over my head – which was absolutely never.

TWM: How did you partner with Rabbi Prinz who wrote about the establishment of the chocolate industry for the adult market?
TLW: Fast forward four years. By then I was semi-retired and the editor of Kar-Ben’s “My Very Own Jewish Calendar,” which entails collecting and writing up four interesting Jewish-related tidbits for each month. Some months have no obvious Jewish connection and I do mental somersaults to create them. February is such a month. When I discovered that February is National Chocolate Lovers Month, I remembered Rabbi Prinz’s book and contacted her about doing an item on it. Of course, the title “The Boston Chocolate Party” popped up on my mental screen, but I forced myself never to talk about a possible collaboration. As the Halacha says: אין מערבבים שמחה בשמחה – one should never combine one simcha with another.

You can imagine the smile that crept across my face when a week after I closed the calendar item with Debbie, I receive an email from her asking: “would you like to collaborate on a children’s book?”

Author Tami Lehman-Wilzig

TWM: What motivated you to combine the story with Hanukkah?
TLW: Another quirky answer, but if you work in advertising, you have a quirky head. One day I wondered what the exact date of the Boston Tea Party was. When I saw it was December 16, 1773, I immediately thought Hmmm…when was Hanukkah that year? I looked up the Jewish year for 1773, looked for Hanukkah on that year’s calendar and voila, there it was! The Boston Tea Party fell on the last night of the holiday. How could I ignore that fact? What a rich connection!

TWM: What research did you conduct and how?
TLW: Debbie provided the background for Jews in chocolate during that period. She took on all historical questions, which were many. Debbie is a real stickler for details, which is fantastic. Thanks to her we were able to incorporate the special cups used to drink hot chocolate and even point out in our “Behind the Story” section at the book’s end that George Washington had his own chocolate cup and what it looked like. Since we wanted to make the story as kid friendly as possible, we decided to incorporate a colonial game. Debbie took that on as well and discovered that Jackstraws was the colonial forerunner of Pick-Up Sticks.

Finally, the actual chocolate making process during the colonial period; that was some procedure! I found a YouTube film from Old Gettysburg Village showing the step-by-step process. I felt that we had to incorporate it into the story. I don’t remember how many times I watched it and jotted down the details in order to write the double spread where Joshua’s family creates their own home chocolate factory.

TWM: Do you belong to a writer’s group? Why/why not?
TLW: Being part of a critique group is essential for every writer. I belong to a group where all the others are American based, plus I have my “critiquers” in Israel. All-in-all, every story I write is sent out to at least 10 people. I write for school-age, picture book readers, so first and foremost is the feedback on each story’s literary quality. Is there a good arc with the proper amount of tension? A fulfilling ending? Character development? What works? What needs to be changed? All of my readers on both sides of the Atlantic are vital for this stage. Next, comes the fact that I’ve been living in Israel for 45 years. That makes my American writer’s group especially important. Countries change over the years. What was acceptable yesteryear maybe taboo today. I have to keep pace with new boundaries, and that group helps keep me in line.

TWM: What were the greatest challenges to writing this story?
TLW: Honestly, getting the right story. We worked on several versions with different scenarios, rejected by numerous publishers. So, we took a long vacation from it. Over a half year later, my husband and I were on a cruise with friends. Don’t ask me what the trigger was but all of a sudden, I wrote to Debbie and said: “I’ve got it!” And so, the present version was born.

TWM: Satisfactions?
TLW: To begin with, working with Debbie was a most pleasurable experience. Co-authoring a book can often lead to a dicey situation. This was not at all the case with us. There was an immediate rapport and an excellent work balance, plus we struck up a friendship that I am sure will last beyond this book. Once we signed contract with Apples and Honey, I found working with them an enriching collaborative process. Their editorial comments were on target. Their openness to our comments and suggestions regarding the illustrations was most gratifying. I could feel my growth as an author throughout, which was a very rewarding feeling.

TWM: What’s next for you?
TLW: Oh…there’s so much! My next book – Luis de Torres Sails to Freedom (Kar-Ben) is coming out on June 6, 2023 – which happens to be my birthday. What a magnificent gift! This story deals with the Spanish Inquisition and has a unique Tisha B’Av connection. I can’t wait for it to appear.

In the Fall of 2024, my next book with Apples and HoneyOn the Wings of Eagles – will bow on the scene and I am very excited about it. It’s about the Aliyah of Yemenite Jews to Israel with a crazy connection to the United States through the specific air carrier that carried out the mission (total surprise!). Living in Israel, I was able to interview adults of Yemenite extraction who were children on that mission. What a story!

I am about to sign contract with Apples and Honey for another book dealing with Yemenite Jewish culture that should be coming out in the Spring of 2025. And I recently submitted a story to a different publisher on Rembrandt and the influence of his Sephardi Jewish neighbors on his painting. Waiting to receive an answer on that one.

Plus, yes…my hyperactive mind is constantly thinking about other new stories that will bring our rich Jewish history and cultural heritage to the fore, not to mention some that will hopefully strengthen the bond between American Jews and Israel. But Barbara, the latter is another interview. The struggling bond between Jews of both countries is of great concern to me.

Thank you so much for interviewing me!

For more about Tami Lehman-Wilzig, please see her website.

Author’s Notebook | The Tower of Life by Chana Stiefel

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Stiefel, Chana. The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs. Illustr. by Susan Gal. Scholastic Press, 2022.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What motivated you to write this story?
Chana Stiefel (CS): I first learned about Yaffa Eliach when I read her obituary in the New York Times in November 2016. I was amazed by her resilience and hope in the face of unbearable tragedy. In creating the Tower of Life at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Yaffa made it her mission to restore humanity to the victims of the Holocaust—to focus on the beautiful lives they lived, ensure that they are not forgotten, and most importantly to say, “Never again!” Sadly, the last remaining survivors of the Holocaust are passing away, and I felt a strong responsibility to share Yaffa’s story with the next generation.

Author Chana Stiefel

TWM: How did you conduct your research?
CS: I started by reading Yaffa’s book, There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (Little, Brown and Company, 1998). (The title of her book is why I chose the first line in my picture book to be: “There once was a girl…”) In this 800-page, monumental work, Yaffa traces the history of her town, its traditions, and the lives of 3,500 Jews who lived there before the Nazis invaded. More than 1,000 of the photos that Yaffa collected appear in the Tower of Life. I also read many articles, transcribed interviews with Yaffa from YouTube, and watched a PBS documentary, narrated by Ed Asner, whose father was born in Eishyshok. I spent a lot of time viewing Yaffa’s remarkable photo archives.

TWM: Did you need to get this narrative vetted by Yaffa’s family and/or the USHMM?
CS: When I started my research, I knew I wanted to get permission from Yaffa’s family to share her story, but I wasn’t sure how. At the time, I was working as Director of Public Relations at Ma’ayanot High School in Teaneck, NJ. Then something remarkable happened. Prof. Smadar Rosensweig, Yaffa’s daughter, was invited to speak to the students at my school on her mother’s first yahrzeit. It was truly “bashert” (“meant to be”). After Smadar spoke, I introduced myself and asked permission to write the book. We later met at her office at Stern College in New York City, and she gave me the go-ahead. Smadar also read many drafts of the book, filled in important details, and helped with photo acquisition.

My editor, Dianne Hess, and I also shared the book with staff at the USHMM on Zoom. They shared some exciting information on how the exhibit is being updated to include multimedia. A former librarian and archivist from the museum also fact checked the book.

TWM: What were the greatest challenges to writing this story? Satisfactions?
CS: The greatest challenge was writing about the Holocaust for children. It’s such a vast and tragic topic and it’s a tremendous challenge to try to bring it down to size for children—to be truthful without traumatizing them. I tried to make this terrible period of history more personal and relatable by telling one woman’s story of survival and triumph. I also tried to follow in Yaffa’s footsteps by focusing on lives that were lived. It was important to me to show children what life was like before the Holocaust. That the victims were people, children who played in the snow, swam in lakes, and helped out with their family businesses. Readers should be able to draw connections between the communities they live in today with the town of Eishyshok. Yaffa wanted people who visit her exhibit to see themselves in the photos–to develop empathy and speak out against hate. That’s the main underlying message that I try to convey in my book.

The greatest satisfaction was seeing how Susan Gal’s stunning illustrations brought this story to life. Every spread is a masterpiece filled with color, texture, and emotion. I am thrilled, but not at all surprised, that Susan’s illustrations have been chosen for the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show in New York City.

An inside spread from The Tower of Life

TWM: What’s next for you?
CS: I’m grateful to have three more picture books coming soon. Mendel’s Hanukkah Mess Up, co-written with my husband Larry Stiefel (a first for us!), illustrated by Daphna Awadish, comes out from Kalaniot on October 25th. Bravo, Avocado! Illustrated by Anna Sussbauer will be published by HarperCollins on March 28, 2023. And Let’s Fly, a PB autobiography, co-written with Barrington Irvington, the youngest and first Black pilot to fly solo around the world, illustrated by Shamar Knight-Justice, will be coming from Dial/PRH in 2024. I’m also working on a Jewish middle-grade novel based on my childhood and growing up with activists for Soviet Jewry in Miami in the 1970s.

TWM: Do you have an agent? If so, who?
CS: I am represented by Miranda Paul at Erin Murphy Literary Agency.

For more about Chana Stiefel, please see her website.





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