Interview with Award-Winning Author Anna Levine

Anna Levine was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and grew up in Montreal, Quebec. At the age of eighteen she decided it was time to leave home and she immigrated to Israel to work on a kibbutz. After a few years of picking apples, and discovering her fear of climbing (and falling) off ladders she moved to Jerusalem where she studied English literature at the Hebrew University. Today, Anna lives in a suburb of Jerusalem and writes about her life in Israel. As a writer, she looks through her Middle Eastern window with Western eyes. Anna says, “Writers are always being told, ‘write what you know.’ There is so much about Israel that I still don’t know! I use my writing as a way to discover more, to understand the past, cope with the present, and imagine the future.”

Anna has written award winning short stories and poems, Freefall (Greenwillow/HarperCollins) has just won the Sydney Taylor Honor Award and her picture book Jodie’s Hanukkah Dig was awarded a Sydney Taylor Notable Award. Anna’s latest book is Jodie’s Passover Adventure.

KAR-BEN: Why did you want to become an author or illustrator?
ANNA: I write to make sense of the world in which I live.

KAR-BEN: Do you have any advice for future authors or illustrators?  
ANNA: Persistence! Attention to detail. And in the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The whole world, all human life, is one long story.” And we are the ones who must find a way to tell and share these stories.

KAR-BEN: Where did you get the inspiration for your latest book, Jodie’s Passover Adventure
ANNA: From where I live, which is here in Israel. Israel is a constant inspiration for my books and stories. My family has also inspired many characters and plots.

KAR-BEN: What are you most excited about promoting in your new book?
ANNA: The fun of archaeology. The adventure of discovery and the possibilities of uncovering the unknown.

Anna at an archeological dig!

KAR-BEN: How do you hope your book will impact the Jewish life of a child?
ANNA: By learning about our history this gives the child a sense of his/her roots and also, since my stories are set in Israel, a connection to modern Israel.

Get Anna's new book, Jodie's Passover Adventure!
Young amateur archeologist Jodie invites her cousin Zach on a Passover adventure to explore Hezekiah’s Tunnel in Jerusalem, the famous secret water tunnel. Sloshing through the long, creepy, dark, wet passage, they solve “the riddle in the middle” and find a shiny treasure!
Available in hardcover and paperback

After the Holidays

Author Anna Levine was kind enough to share some of her reflections on Israel and the Fall Holidays. Now that they're over and Hanukkah has not yet begun, we feel like new projects are sprouting up all over! Welcome to the blog, Anna! (Here's Anna in Modi'in, the setting for Jodie's Hanukkah Dig.)

Some time around the beginning of September we start using the Hebrew phrase achrai hachagim. Literally this translates to “after the holidays.” However, this quintessential Israeli expression really means, “there’s no point of even thinking of doing anything until after the holidays, so don’t even try.”

I am used to this by now, though many immigrants unfamiliar with this mind set have a hard time adjusting. The first night of Sukkot we had a young guest who is in Israel for the year. He is in the throes of finding an apartment and says that dealing with Israeli bureaucracy makes him feel more Israeli every time he comes face to face with a brick wall and manages to take one down. “But these last 2 weeks,” he says, “have been impossible. How can the country function when everything closes down for the holidays?”

We adapt. It rained last night and a bit today and for these few weeks of the year we get a taste of autumn and we are reminded that our Holy Days have an agricultural as well as spiritual tie. The fruits which decorate the sukkah are the ones that are also ripening naturally on the trees in our gardens. Driving from Jerusalem to my cousins in the north I notice the changes of season as they are defined by the changes in the agricultural landscape. If the fields are white, then the cotton is ready for picking. It must be Fall.

In a way, it is liberating to know that absolutely nothing will get done during the time it takes for the new moon of Rosh Hashana to round out into the full moon of Sukkot. I love how the Israeli year is divided according to the Jewish holidays. We welcome in 5770 by sitting back and allowing ourselves to adjust to the feel of the new year and the changes of weather, celebrating with family and friends—giving ourselves time to adapt, and to think about the future.

As for me, I won’t be looking too far into the future for the next while. I’ll be looking into the past. With my picture book, Jodie’s Hanukkah Dig, having received a Sydney Taylor Notable award, I’ve gotten the go ahead for another archaeological book. This one takes place in Hezekiah’s Tunnel. A miraculous feat of engineering, built long before surveyors could scout with sophisticated equipment, tractors could dig, or diggers could lead without even a flashlight, King Hezekiah (First Temple period) planned, executed and succeeded in building a water tunnel through which water is still flowing today, two thousand years later, under the City of Jerusalem.

I’ll start working seriously on the revisions for this book sometime after the holidays, achrai hachagim. For now I wonder, do you think when King Hezekiah gathered his workers together he said, “Okay guys, we need to get this project done quickly.” And they looked back at him, and with all the respect they could muster, said, “Sure your majesty, no problem. We’ll get right to it—achrai hachagim.”