Archive for the ‘News’ Category
The September Jewish Book Carnival
09/15/11
forwordsbooks is thrilled to be hosting this month’s Jewish Book Carnival, a gathering of blogs about Jewish books and other happenings in the Jewish world. Please visit this month’s participants and comment on their web sites making sure you tell them you saw their post at the September Jewish Book Carnival.
Would you like to get to know more about the authors who write your favorite books? Or perhaps you are looking for a little background music while you read? Check out these fantastic websites:
Listen to The Book of Life’s newest podcast episode featuring Sarah Darer Littman talking about her novel Life, After, a 2011 Sydney Taylor Honor Book for teens. Her novels are always brave, taking on subjects that others might fear to talk about.
Barbara Krasner at The Whole Megillah: The Writer’s Resource for Jewish-Themed Children’s Books provides a very special look inside the book with an Author-Agent-Editor Three-in-one Special Notebook about OyMG byAmy Fellner Dominy
Jewish Book Council’s Intern, Alyssa Berlin, discusses the trend in “Reading with Soundtracks.” This is an awesome look at the connection between books and music. Be sure you have your MP3 player and ear buds on hand.
Erika Dreifus shares a Q&A with author Anna Solomon about THE LITTLE BRIDE, Solomon’s new historical novel featuring a Jewish mail-order bride who travels from Odessa and lands in South Dakota.
With so many new books to choose from each month, it is wonderful to have dedicated reviewers to let us know about the best of the bunch.
Amy Meltzer at Homeshuling: A Jewish Parenting Blog provides an excellent review of the new Kar-Ben book, Joseph and the Sabbath Fish by Eric Kimmel in her blog Joseph and the Sabbath Fish, or I Love Eric Kimmel, Part Two.
Barbara Krasner at The Whole Megillah: The Writer’s Resource for Jewish-Themed Children’s Books reviews OyMG by Amy Fellner Dominy
BostonBibliophile is taking the Art of the Novella Reading Challenge. Read the review of her third novella, Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance by Sholem Aleichem, and follow her progress toward her goal of reading six novellas in 30 days.
Also from the Jewish Book Council, guest blogger Wayne Hoffman (Sweet Like Sugar) offers a Gay Jewish Reading List .
Visit Sylvia Rouss’ website to read her newest book, Jognau, the Dreamer, an original story by Sylvia Rouss and Raoul Wallenberg Prize winner, Ambassador Asher Naim, illustrated by Dawn Phillips. Ambassador Naim and Sylvia have donated the story to the Scholarship Fund for Ethiopian Jews. Sylvia’s son Jordan, an attorney, and his good friend Geoffrey Bennett, an NPR producer, volunteered to produce and narrate the animated version which you can also see on the site.
Then hop over to Barbara Bietz’s “Jewish Books for Children with Author Barbara Bietz” for some inside information from Sylvia about how she came to meet Ambassador Asher Naim and subsequently write a book in partnership with him. It is always very interesting how the stars align in writers’ lives.
Jonathan Kirsch reviews Portraits in Literature: The Jews of Poland, An Anthology edited by Hava Bromberg Ben-Zvi, reminding us that while over half the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were Polish Jews, “Poland was the seat of a vibrant and enduring Jewish civilization that survives on the printed page and, in a real sense, in many of our own ideas about what it means to be Jewish.”
Here at forwordsbooks, we kicked off the New Year with “The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far: Honoring One’s Parents/Kibud Av v’Em,” a look at books that support this most difficult of all commandments.
And last but not least, learn how the research can have a bigger impact on the writer than the writing, in this fascinating blog by Linda K. Wertheimer:
In “Visiting Mosques Teaches Countless Lessons, “Jewish Muse blogger Linda K. Wertheimer recounts the lessons she learned when she visited mosques while shadowing middle school students as they learned about world religions. She was surprised at how much she learned along with them.
As always there is much to read, explore and learn from each of these wonderful websites. Don’t forget to tell them you were here and where you heard about them, if you drop by for a visit. Next month’s Carnival will be hosted at Homeshuling. For more information about the Jewish Book Carnival and a list of all the participants, please visit the Association of Jewish Libraries’ Jewish Book Carnival blog. Thanks for stopping by!
Wishing you a sweet, healthy and book-filled New Year.
Happy Reading,
Kathy B.
©2011 Kathleen M. Bloomfield and forwordsbooks.com all rights reserved.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book title referred to on my web site and purchase it from Amazon,
I may receive a very small commission on your purchase.
You will incur no additional cost, however.
I appreciate your support.
I am learning so much – Which is why I LOVE Bloggiesta!
01/22/11
PEDRO!!!
Plan. Edit. Develop. Review. Organize.
I just learned how to create a Google Form using Google Documents. Thanks to Jen at Devourer of Books. I am working with all of Jen’s tricks to see if the form will embed in my WordPress blog. Here it is:
No problems! A couple of width changes, but it looks great. Then I decided to do a completely different form and it turned out fine as well. Wow, this could be fantastic. Thanks Jen!
Happy Reading!
Kathy B.
©2011 Kathleen M. Bloomfield and forwordsbooks.com all rights reserved.
Books used in this review were provided by my local public library.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book title referred to on my web site and purchase it from Amazon,
I may receive a very small commission on your purchase.
You will incur no additional cost, however.
I appreciate your support.
Today My Music Died
01/09/11
The music died today.
Well, my music anyway – the music that called my heart to Judaism. I still vividly remember driving home, from where I do not know, but I do know I was driving down Palos Verdes Boulevard in California and listening to 
And You Shall Be a Blessing… . I had listened to this music repeatedly since attending the “Timbrels of Miriam” Conference at the, at that time, University of Judaism where I purchased it.
I knew all the songs and sang along with them in order, not really understanding the Hebrew nor really listening to what I was singing. I simply loved the melodies. It was dark, I was driving alone in the car. Lechi Lach came on, and I began to sing:
Lechi lach to a land that I will show you
Lech li-cha to a place you do not know
Lechi lach on your journey I will bless you
And you shall be a blessing, you shall be a blessing
You shall be a blessing lechi lach
Suddenly, I listened to the words and understood their meaning.
Suddenly, the words made sense to me, in terms of my own life.
Suddenly, I was singing and tears were pouring out of my eyes. I had to pull over and stop the car.
I wasn’t singing a song any longer. I was hearing a message telling me that I was on a journey. That the journey was a sacred one, and that everything would be all right. I had God’s blessing to proceed.
Alone in the car, I cried a little harder and a little longer, then pulled myself together and got myself home. From that moment on, Lechi Lach (Go! Go!) has been my anthem/motto/principle. I believe it was at that moment, alone on that dark road, that I knew I would become a Jew – because of Debbie Friedman’s (z’l) incredible talent with words and music. Now, suddenly and unexpectedly, Debbie is gone, and my heart grieves with her family and the rest of the world as we try to determine what the future will be without her and her gifts.
I know we will travel forward to that unknown place, carrying Debbie Friedman’s (z’l) songs and teaching in our hearts, passing them on to our children and their children far into the future. Just like the promise God made to Abraham, the singing of Debbie’s songs will be counted like the dust of the earth. That is her blessing and our birthright.
Kathy B.
©2010 Kathleen M. Bloomfield and forwordsbooks.com all rights reserved.
CDs used in this review were from my personal collection.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a title referred to on my web site and purchase it from Amazon,
I may receive a very small commission on your purchase.
You will incur no additional cost, however.
I appreciate your support.
A Wake Up Call
10/11/10
I have not been sitting idly by watching the world around me “go to Hell in a hand basket” as my grandmother used to say. I have been more than busy for sure with children moving away, finding and starting a new job and myriad other of life’s challenges. Yesterday, however, I received my blog wake up call.
It’s not that I didn’t have plenty to write about when Phoebe Prince took her own life as the result of cyber bullying on the part of her classmates.
I had even more to say about the suicide of Tyler Clementi whose roommate and his girlfriend video taped Tyler in his private space and then posted the video on the internet.
I could write for hours about the political attack ads currently airing thanks to the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision by the Supreme Court allowing anonymity of funding sources and unrestricted donation amounts.
Yet none of these got me to sit down at my computer to blog about the childrens books and their values content that we – and the Supreme Court, Rutgers and high school students everywhere – should be reading to get ourselves back on track. No, it was yesterday’s New York Times headline: “Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children” that got my tushi in the chair.
Are they kidding – apparently not, according to this article. The economic downturn is not the only cause of the downfall of the picture book. It’s “The Parents,” says the article.
Yes, according to the NYT parents everywhere are pushing their children out of picture books and into chapter books in order to improve their scores on standardized tests. Four-year-olds are reading Stuart Little, Five-year-olds are reading The Phantom Tollbooth. Has anyone discussed with “The Parents” the difference between reading and comprehension or the importance of choosing books for their age-appropriateness not just for reading-level? There are picture books as appropriate for adults as are for 4-8 year olds simply because the power of the words rests as much in the life experience of the reader as in word definitions. The pictures simply add to the drama of the story.
Here’s an idea: Teachers, Librarians, Children’s Book Lovers everywhere suggest that everyone go back to basics and read – a picture book! Let’s start here:
The Golden Rule by Ilene Cooper. Illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska. © 2007, Abrams Books for Young Readers. Ages 4-8. In this very beautiful, very simple, extraordinary book, a grandfather explains the Golden Rule to his grandson. “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You.” Found in all the world’s religions and cultures, it is an easy statement, but apparently very difficult to live by. As Grandfather says, “‘You can’t make everyone in the world practice the Golden Rule. There’s only one person you can ask to do that.’ ‘Me?’” Says his grandson. “‘You. It begins with you.’”
Perhaps, if we start with the basics, the hand basket we are all riding in will change direction as a result.
Happy Reading,
Kathy B.
P.S. As you can imagine the Kidlitosphere has been abuzz with the news of this article in the NYT. My favorite blog was written by MotherReader and of special note is the blog of the mother interviewed in the NYT article regarding how her comments were taken out of context.
©2010 Kathleen M. Bloomfield and forwordsbooks.com all rights reserved.
The Book used in this review was from my personal library. I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book title referred to on my web site and purchase it from Amazon, I may receive a very small commission on your purchase.
You will incur no additional cost, however.
I appreciate your support.
From “Cauldrons” to “Punchbowls”
08/12/10
I heard someone on NPR last night say that the Blogosphere has become “a cauldron of rage.” As someone who also tends towards broad generalizations, I felt a little put out by that statement. I am a member of the Blogosphere, and I do not feel that my blog is “a cauldron of rage” (although there are times when I would certainly like to use it that way.) Could it be possible that the Kidlitosphere (a small portion of the Blogosphere) might be able to dilute that “cauldron” a bit – one children’s book at a time?
Perhaps what the world needs in order to pull itself out of the “cauldron of rage” is to read some excellent, interesting, well illustrated and subtlety values laden children’s books. Perhaps going back – way back – to our roots, shoring up those foundations with a few gentle Bible stories, some charming Aesop’s Fables and the like might create a new world filled with smiles and joy rather than frowns and sorrow. Could we turn that “cauldron of rage” into a “punchbowl of happiness”?
I plan to do my best to help the Blogosphere, and the world, on this journey – one children’s book at a time.
Happy Reading,
Kathy B.
