Out and About with Authors

Sure, authors love writing, but the real fun part is meeting readers! Our authors travel all over the U.S. and in Israel to speak at book fairs, schools, and community organizations. It's a thrill to see them in their element, speaking about the inspiration for their latest book or what idea got them writing in the first place. Here are some recent author appearances:

Chris Nicola signing The Secret of Priest's Grotto at the Southwest Florida Chapter of the Explorers Club. Photo by Jim Thompson.

Jacqueline Jules (left) and Katherine Janus Kahn sign copies of The Ziz and the Hanukkah Miracle at the NAEYC Conference. Photo by Madeline Wikler.

Heidi Smith Hyde signs Mendel's Accordion for fans at Temple Sinai in Brookline, MA. Photo provided by the author.

If you're organizing an event at your school, synagogue, or JCC, consider inviting a Kar-Ben author or illustrator! Check out our brochure for more information, and you can always email publicity@karben.com to see if there's an author or illustrator in your area.

Commemorating Kristallnacht

Today marks the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On the night of November 9, 1938, pogroms (organized anti-Jewish riots) destroyed Jewish property including synagogues, cemetaries, storefronts, and businesses. Jewish people were assaulted, arrested, and killed by raging crowds, while police stood by waiting for orders from Nazi officials. This horrific night marked the beginning of the Holocaust.

Though this is a difficult subject for children to understand, there are many resources available to teachers and parents looking to start discussions with older children. It's imperative that everyone, young and old, know about this dark time in history and work together to educate others so that we never forget.

Selected Holocaust books from Kar-Ben:

Six Million Paper Clips

The Secret of Priest's Grotto

An Unbroken Chain (soon to be a movie)

Other links:

AJL's Podcast "Teaching the Holocaust Through Picture Books"

AJL's Podcast "Not Just the Facts: Illustrated Non-Fiction for Youth" (fast-forward to 34:30 to hear Chris Nicola speak about Priest's Grotto)

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Kristallnacht exhibit page

Meet Author Carole G. Vogel

Our guest blogger today is Carole G. Vogel, co-author of The Man Who Flies with Birds. Carole was kind enough to fill us in on how she connected with co-author Yossi Leshem (the Man) and how her childhood fascination with research and science turned her into a nonfiction writer. Thanks, Carole!

Where did you get the inspiration for your Kar-Ben book, The Man Who Flies with Birds?
As a writer of children’s environmental books, I am constantly on the prowl for new topics that will excite kids. While perusing the October 2004 issue of New Scientist magazine, I tripped across an article called “Bird Traffic Controller” which described the fascinating work of Israeli bird expert, Yossi Leshem. Yossi soars with eagles literally and figuratively. In a motorized glider he flew alongside migrating flocks of eagles, storks, and other large soaring birds so he could track their migration paths through Israeli airspace. Before Yossi came along, the Israel Air Force (IAF) was losing planes to bird strikes—collisions between birds and aircraft. The IAF used Yossi’s research to teach pilots how to avoid the paths of migrating birds.

What most appealed to you about Yossi Leshem’s work?
I always wanted to write a book about Israel that showed the ingenuity of its scientists. I loved Yossi’s passion for birds and his use of science to resolve the conflict between birds and planes. Yossi’s message about bringing peace to the Middle East one bird lover at a time resonated deeply with me, as did his pro-environmental activism. For instance, many people look at owls and hawks and think “large birds.” Yossi looks at them and thinks “flying mousetraps” and then convinces Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian farmers to substitute barn owls and kestrels (small hawks) for pesticides. In one foul swoop Yossi addressed a critical environmental issue (pesticides are poisoning the soil and ground water) and a political issue (finding common ground among historical enemies).

What are you most excited about promoting in your new book?
I am a physicist’s daughter and part of me is most excited about Yossi’s use of science to solve seemingly unsolvable problems. But I am also excited about a whole compendium of other things. I always had in mind to write a book that cast Israel as a light among nations. I believe that this book fits that bill. Writing a hopeful book about Israel was especially important to me because many of my relatives live in Israel, as does my dear friend Sally Nemzow Esakov to whom I dedicated the book. I also want my readers to learn about this amazing human being, Yossi Leshem. He is proof that one person can make difference if he or she is empowered.

What is the most interesting thing you learned in the process of writing it?
I was surprised to learn that half a billion birds migrate through Israel’s tight airspace twice yearly during the spring and fall migrations. This may not mean much to the average reader but being bird savvy, I realized that Israel was likely the single most important flyway (highway in the sky for migrating birds) in the world. One of my goals in writing The Man Who Flies with Birds is to raise awareness inside Israel and out, of the importance of protecting the remaining natural areas in Israel. They are crucial to the survival of the migrating birds of central Europe and western Asia.

What are you working on now?
I am exploring several different ideas. Most of my books so far have been on science and environmental topics. They reflect my keen interest in the natural world. But I am also a Jewish history buff. In my spare time I have been researching my genealogy and the places where my ancestors lived. I have come across some amazing material and I am wondering if I can spin it into a book or a couple of books, or perhaps half a dozen books. I also might like to take a stab at collaborating on a biography with another interesting public figure. And of course I am always on the lookout for a new science angle to explore.

What did you like to read when you were a child?
As a kid, one of my favorite books was Songs of the Swallows by Leo Politi (New York: Scribner, 1949). This Caldecott Medal-winning book immortalizes the annual return of the swallows to San Capistrano Mission in California, and Juan the boy who loves them. I was kind of like Juan in that I looked forward to my first sign of spring—the return of robins to my yard in suburban Pittsburgh. I remember watching the robins pull worms out of the lawn and thinking that I was glad that I didn’t have to eat anything so icky. It made me curious about the foods that wild animals ate and why. I was fascinated by the idea that the shape of a bird’s beak determines the kind of food the bird can eat. I was also fascinated by its corollary in the mammalian order–the kind of teeth that mammals have determines the mammal’s food.

As a teeneager, I read incessantly about World War II and the fate of the Jews in Europe. My parents were Holocaust survivors and they steadfastly refused to discuss their experiences under Nazi tyranny or the fate of their many relatives who had vanished. The subject of the Holocaust was never discussed in any of my classes in public and Hebrew school until my 10th grade confirmation class at Temple David in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Our rabbi, Rabbi David Edelstein, gave a comprehensive overview, replete with a film from a liberated concentration camp. It was horrifying but I was grateful for finally finding one adult who didn’t shy from the topic.

One of the requirements for confirmation was to write a 10-page term paper on any Jewish-related subject. For my topic I chose “The History of Anti-Semitism.” I needed to know the antecedents in history that set the stage for Germany’s attempt to exterminate the Jews. It was depressing reading but it made me realize that events in the distant past could dramatically influence the present and future. This was the first time that I experienced the intellectual rush that I still get from doing research.

What are some interesting facts about you?
I like to hike on the flanks of volcanoes. So far I have hiked at least seven volcanoes (two of them were active at the time but not violently so.)

My idea of a great vacation is to go to a distant land and meet relatives that I haven’t met in person before. So far, I have met up with relatives in Israel, England, Austria, Germany, and Russia. My daughter has visited relatives in most of these countries plus France and Argentina.

About a dozen years ago I got the courage to join a dialogue group that brought together children of Holocaust survivors with the sons and daughters of Nazis or German bystanders. I became good friends with Inge Franken, the daughter of an avowed Nazi who served in the German Army during World War II and died on the Russian front. Together, Inge and I have given presentations in schools and colleges in the United States and Germany, where we discuss growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust from both perspectives.

My dad was a physicist. He took my two sisters and me to his research labs when my mom needed peace and quiet. There, he would perform scientific experiments to keep us occupied. My favorite involved using liquid nitrogen to freeze rubber hosing. When it was frozen, the rubber lost its ability to bend. It became so stiff that Dad could shatter it by whacking it against a table and the bits of tubing flew all over the room. The pieces cooled immediately and became flexible again.

I have identified more than 150 different kinds of birds, including one (a herring gull) that pooped on my head while I was watching it.

You can meet Carole at these upcoming events:

Beth El of N. Westchester Chappaqua, NY
12/3/2009 3:45 PM

JCC of Worcester, MA
3/11/2010 7 PM

Sussex County Main Library in Newton, NJ

3/20/2010 11:00 AM

Interested in having Carole speak at your school, JCC, or congregation? Contact publicity@karben.com.

Bonjour, Sammy!

Sammy Spider is a lucky guy. He gets to learn about the Jewish holidays and go on adventures with his buddy Josh (the kitchen! Israel! School!). Now he'll get to meet little French speakers! Here's a sneak peek at the new Sammy Spider books in French from Yodéa Editions.


UPDATE: Here's where you can order the books.

Bat-Chen's Hope for Peace Lives On

A few years ago, I became familiar with the life of Bat-Chen Shahak. Kar-Ben published the English edition of her diaries, which had been published in several languages already. Bat-Chen lived in Tel Mond, Israel, not far from Jerusalem. She was smart, sassy, and full of imagination. Her life was cut short when, on her 15th birthday on Purim of 1996, she was killed by a suicide bomber while while visiting Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center.

Bat-Chen's story is just one of thousands of children whose lives were lost because of war and terrorism. Her diaries reveal her uncertainties of the future, her feelings about the conflict going on in Israel, and her love of her family, friends, and her home country.

Today, her parents have established The Association for the Commemoration of Bat-Chen Shahak and travel all over the world, sharing Bat-Chen's story and working to fulfill her dreams of peace. They speak to students of all backgrounds about the power of keeping a diary, giving out copies of The Bat-Chen Diaries and a blank one to use as their own. This concept has been especially relevant to young people in southern Israel, who see it as a therapeutic aid in dealing with stress, anxiety and trauma which often are a part of these children's lives while living in the shadow of kassam rockets and unrest.

Bat-Chen's story has been deeply felt in Tel Mond's sister city, Sarasota, Florida. One of Bat-Chen's drawings won an annual art contest there, and it was enlarged to billboard size and appeared in a city-wide exhibition. The topic of the drawing was her family and was drawn when Bat-Chen was only 12 years old. In honor of the new year, a copy of the huge enlarged picture arrived in Tel Mond and is on permanent display at an elementary school.

Bat-Chen's story proves the power of writing and imagination, even that of a young person, can live on after one's death.

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.”

Making Jewish Preschoolers Giggle

We asked Jacqueline Jules, author of many Kar-Ben books including the Ziz series, Sydney Taylor Honor Award winner Sarah Laughs, and the preschool favorite Once Upon a Shabbos, to be a guest blogger. Welcome to the Kar-Ben Blog, Jackie!

In 1996, I was “Miss Jackie” to two entirely different groups of preschoolers. During the week, I was a library media specialist who conducted story times for young children who loved nothing more than to be entertained. I read lots of traditional stories with a chorus, because I found my students liked those best. When children happily join along in a repeated song or phrase, story time is an engaging, interactive experience for all.

But “I’ll huff and I’ll puff” is more than an entertaining chant for young learners. It is an opportunity to build language, the foundation for literacy skills.

On Saturdays, I was “Miss Jackie” to a group of preschoolers and their parents who came for Tot Shabbat services. We had a service booklet with a few prayers and just before the end, at the point where a sermon might come in an adult service, I always read or told a story. For my Tot Shabbat kids, I also wanted an engaging, interactive experience. I searched for Jewish children’s books with a traditional chorus, inviting everyone to join in with unabashed glee. There weren’t enough to fill the school year. In fact, many of the Jewish books I found in the public library had a decidedly expository feel to them. They explained Shabbat or Jewish holidays to kids in often lengthy and didactic text. I found this disappointing. Not every Christmas or Easter book explains the religious background of the holiday. Most depicted happy families celebrating within heartwarming or humorous plots. Why were so many Jewish children’s books thinly veiled nonfiction, primarily explaining the reasons behind ritual? And why weren’t there more Jewish books that made preschoolers giggle?

I thought about this one day, as I was reading an Appalachian folktale called Sody Salleratus to my weekday kids. In this traditional story, a grandmother sends out each member of her family to buy sody salleratus or baking soda so she can make biscuits. Each family member leaves the house singing about the item they are to buy and each one encounters a bear, who gobbles them up, much as the wolf in Red Riding Hood. While it may seem at first glance, a gruesome story, it is actually an empowering one because the children roar with the bear just before he swallows each character. And like Red Riding Hood, everyone is extracted from the bear’s stomach for a happy ending. My weekday students adored this story and asked for it again. They loved singing the song. They loved roaring like a bear. And I loved to see them giggle.

“Why isn’t there a Jewish version of Sody Salleratus?” I asked myself. My Tot Shabbat kids would have as much fun with something like this as my weekday kids. So I sat down at my computer to write a Jewish Sody Salleratus. The first thing I did was change the Appalachian setting. It became Brooklyn with a Yiddish speaking Bubbe and Zayde.

Instead of baking soda biscuits, Bubbe was preparing to make her sweet Shabbos kugel for Friday night dinner. Missing a key ingredient from her cabinet, she sends her grandson Jacob to the corner store with a little gelt. Jacob skips out of the apartment, singing “Honey, honey sweet as Shabbos!” Then the bear, who just happens to be lost in Brooklyn, enters. He wants the honey Jacob is taking to Bubbe for her sweet Shabbos kugel.

My Jewish re-telling of Sody Salleratus, went very well up until that point. Then I was stuck! How could the bear swallow Jacob? My Tot Shabbat parents would be horrified! Clearly, my original inspiration could not be followed verbatim. But was there any reason why a nice Jewish family couldn’t make friends with a bear lost in Brooklyn right before Shabbos? Especially a bear who comes from a storybook and loves Shabbos dinner?

With my story finished, I got a bear puppet and performed it for my Tot Shabbat group. It was an immediate hit. The children sang along and roared in all the right places. So did the adults.
Once Upon a Shabbos, my greatly altered Jewish version of Sody Salleratus was published by Kar-Ben Publishers in 1998 with whimsical illustrations by the wonderful Katherine Janus Kahn. Since then, I have received numerous feedback from Jewish teachers and storytellers who tell me they have used Once Upon a Shabbos with great success at their own story times. And when the book went out of print for a couple of years, I heard many pleas for its return. I was absolutely delighted this year when Kar-Ben brought Once Upon a Shabbos back into print by popular demand. For a taste of the book, here's the book trailer:

Gut Shabbos!