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(For books published in 2007)

Sarah Gershman and Kristina Swarner, author and illustrator of The Bedtime Sh'ma: A Good Night Book, Sid Fleischman, author of The Entertainer and the Dybbuk, and Sonia Levitin, author of Strange Relations, are the 2008 winners of the Sydney Taylor Book Award. The Sydney Taylor Book Award of the Association of Jewish Libraries honors new books for children and teens that exemplify the highest literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience. The award memorializes Sydney Taylor, author of the classic All-of-a-Kind Family series.


Gershman and Swarner will receive the 2008 gold medal in the Sydney Taylor Book Award's Younger Readers Category for The Bedtime Sh'ma: A Good Night Book, published by EKS Publishing. The "nightime" or "bedtime" Sh'ma is a little known collection of liturgical passages that comfort the reader before sleep. Excerpts from these passages, selected and interpreted for children, are presented in full at the back of the book, which is written in Hebrew and English. The book itself is absolutely lovely, with a well-designed format, simple words, and warm illustrations by the illustrator of Before You Were Born by Howard Schwartz. This is a perfect book for bedtime reading and is suitable for very young children. It is accompanied by an audio CD of excerpts set to music.


Fleischman will receive the 2008 gold medal in the Sydney Taylor Book Award's Older Readers Category for The Entertainer and the Dybbuk, published by HarperCollins Children's Books. In post-World War II Europe, a struggling American ventriloquist called The Great Freddie gets an offer of help with his act from a dybbuk, the ghost of a boy who was killed in the Holocaust. The dybbuk speaks for Freddy so that his ineptitude as a ventriloquist isn't visible and in gaining a voice, the dybbuk is able to speak out against the murder of himself and millions of others by the Nazis. Written with humor and compassion by an award winning author of many books for children, adults, and magicians.


Levitin will receive the 2008 gold medal in the Sydney Taylor Book Award's Teen Readers Category for Strange Relations, published by Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books. Fifteen-year-old Marne spends the summer in Hawaii with her religiously observant aunt and the aunt’s large family. Not since The Singing Mountain has Levitin explored the varieties of Jewish practice in such depth. An absorbing story of good people striving for religious authenticity and learning to understand one another. Sonia Levitin also won the 1987 Sydney Taylor Book Award for The Return and two honor awards for The Singing Mountain (1998) and Silver Days (1989).

 

 

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Six Sydney Taylor Honor Books were named for 2008. For Younger Readers, Honor Books are: The Castle on Hester Street. Revised Edition by Linda Heller with new illustrations by Boris Kulikov (Simon & Schuster), Letter on the Wind by Sarah Lamstein with illustrations by Neil Waldman (Boyds Mills Press), and Light written and illustrated by Jane Breskin Zalben (Dutton Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group).


For Older Readers, the Honor Books are: Holocaust: The Events and Their Impact on Real People by Angela Gluck Wood with consulting by Dan Stone (DK Publishing in association with USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education) and The Secret of Priest's Grotto by Peter Lane Taylor and Christos Nicola (Kar-Ben).


For Teen Readers, the Honor Book is Let Sleeping Dogs Lie by Mirjam Pressler, translated from the German by Erik J. Macki (Front Street/Boyds Mills Press).
 

 

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The winner for Children’s and Young Adult Literature is Homeland: The Illustrated History of the State of Israel by Marv Wolfman, Mario Ruiz, and William Rubin, published by Nachshon Press. Imagine taking a semester-long course on the complete history of Israel, from the days of Genesis to events as recent as January 2007. Using an innovative method of illustration that combines photographs and full-color digital art, Homeland is graphic nonfiction of the very highest quality. Written from an Israeli point of view, the text is balanced and well-documented with end notes and a bibliography. The pages are chock full of notable figures in Israel’s history, from Abraham and Sarah to Ariel Sharon and Ilan Ramon. World events that have affected Israel, such as the Holocaust, the Gulf Wars, and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, are covered, as are the contributions of Israelis to the arts, sciences, and technology.


Finalists were Hitler’s Canary by Sandi Toksvig (Roaring Brook Press), A Shout in the Sunshine by Mara Cohen Ioannides (Jewish Publication Society ).

 

The winner of the Illustrated Children’s Books Louis Posner Memorial Award is Even Higher by Richard Ungar (Tundra Books of Northern New York ). Reuven is put up to spying on the rabbi by his friends in this picture book retelling of “If Not Higher” by I. L. Peretz. They want to know if the rabbi really goes to heaven to plead for the village of Nemirov on the day before Rosh Hashanah as people say. Having witnessed the rabbi's acts of kindness towards someone in dire need, Reuven answers, "Even higher." Full color illustrations fill the pages with an autumn palette of blazing reds and blues, adding charming details, such as a cat curled into curves on top of the sleeping rabbi.


The finalist was The Bedtime Sh'ma: A Good Night Book adapted by Sarah Gershman; illustrated by Kristina Swarner (EKS Publishing ).

 

The winner of the Jewish Family Literature In Memory of Dorothy Kripke is The Power of Song: And Other Sephardic Tales by Rita Roth, illustrated by Alexa Ginsburg, (Jewish Publication Society ). Drawing on sources that range from the Israel Folk Archives (IFA) to Judeo-Spanish ballad chapbooks, the author spins thirteen tales from the Sephardic tradition, some of them better known by their Ashkenazi variants. Djoha (Joha) the trickster appears in a story reminiscent of one about the Eastern European folk hero, Hershele Ostropoyler, who intimidates his foes by threatening to “do what my father did.” “Zipporah and the Seven Walnuts” is, like Nina Jaffe’s The Way Meat Loves Salt, a Cinderella story, with origins in Morocco. Another familiar Ashkenazi story about the king who went searching for a true friend is told here as a riddle tale, adapted by the author from Babylonian and Persian Jewish sources. Comments by the author follow each story. With a format similar to Gershator’s Wise and Not So Wise: Ten Tales from the Rabbis, plus the same illustrator, there are simple, softly colored black, white, and grey illustrations inside the book and an inviting cover in color. The length of the stories varies, with several short ones and several longer, more complex ones.
The finalist was A Hanukkah Present by Mark Binder (Light Publications).

 

(Publication information about these titles can be found in The Jewish Valuesfinder.)

 

 

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