Teachers: Plan Ahead for Rosh Hashanah Events

In What’s the Buzz: Honey for a Sweet New Year, learn how the honey is extracted from the combs and makes its way from the hive to the table, to be enjoyed with slices of apples for a Rosh Hashanah treat from the perspective of a young Israeli girl on a class field trip.

Unique Rosh Hashanah program ideas for your school: This book offers cross-curricular tie-ins with science, including: studying insects such as bees, the recent threat to the bee population (called colony collapse disorder) as well as the benefits of symbiosis. Students can visit a bee farm or schools can invite a beekeeper to speak to an assembly.

This book is the third in Kar-Ben’s “Nature in Israel” series, and can be part of student learning about Israel, including its terrain and habitat and why it is called the land of milk and honey!

Storybook Characters Blossom in Holon’s Gardens

Imagine you are five years old and in a beautiful park.

Now imagine you see your favorite storybook characters in that park. How excited would you be?

In Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, there are, incredibly, thirty one different story book gardens with sculptures, figures and playground equipment featuring characters from Israeli children’s books. No wonder Holon is nicknamed “the Children’s City!” View the amazing sculptures.

While the gardens are a fun place to play, their greatest benefit is imparting a love of books and reading to young children. For more information about kid-friendly sites in Israel, check out Zvuvi’s Israel with its fun “Where’s Waldo?” format! Children can search for the fun fly hiding on the slopes of Mt. Hermon, in the salty waters of the Dead Sea, and among the models in the Mini-Israel theme park.  Zvuvi even has his own blog.Check it out! 

How does your community make reading exciting for kids?

Sending Kids to Visit Their Grandparents? Ideas for Activities

How many of you are sending your children off to visit grandparents before school begins, or, if you are grandparents, anxiously awaiting the arrival of your favorite little people? Maybe your family is the highly active type that plans outings, maybe hiking or visiting museums. Or, maybe you like more low-key amusements like going to the movies or out for a bite to eat. Sometimes grandparents feel like they have to entertain grandchildren (or grandchildren expect it), so visits become chock filled with moving from one programmed activity to the next. Finding activities that have real value and can deepen relationships can be difficult, and yet another trip to the pizza-token-arcade place might not be it. On the other hand, some families are the exact opposite, where children need to entertain themselves when visiting grandparents.

If you have the opportunity to spend time with grandchildren, especially with kids in that tricky tween age range, a terrific project is creating a memory book. Grandparents and grandchildren can work together to complete the book’s thoughtful questionnaires and to fill in the family tree. You might talk about what your bar or mat mitzvah was like and what your grandchild hopes his or hers is like. You might explain where special Rosh Hashanah recipes were handed down from, and what your own favorite parts of holidays are. Learn more about the Grandparent's Memory Book for Jewish Families.

If your grandchild doesn’t have the attention for project that requires writing, try doing an interview and recording it. If you have smaller grandchildren, videotape yourself reading books with them. I highly recommend A Grandma Like Yours/A Grandpa Like Yours, in which a whimsical collection of animal grandparents illustrate the characteristics of Jewish grandparents. Then, talk about what kind of grandparent your grandchild thinks you are!

Are you off to grandma’s this summer?

Books and Baseball

My inaugural blog post as the new publicity coordinator for Kar-Ben is inspired by the people I’ve seen in the neighborhood where our building is located. Kar-Ben’s office is located just a couple blocks away from where the Minnesota Twins play Major League baseball, Target field. Each afternoon as I’ve made my way home, hordes of ardent baseball fans have been swarming off the light rail trains as I’m stepping on virtually empty trains to go the opposite direction. These must be some loyal and dedicated fans, since lately here in the Midwest we’ve had the most oppressive heat and humidity that this area has seen in decades. Heat and baseball do share summer in common, as does an important activity: keeping kids reading during summer break.  

Keeping children actively engaged in reading helps avoid the summer slide and keeps up important skills like reading comprehension and building vocabulary. Some children see summer as a time free from academic demands and haven’t yet realized that reading can be pleasurable. Have a reluctant reader but an avid sports fan? Encourage your child to read books about subjects—like baseball—about which he or she truly cares. You (and they) may be surprised by how they devour books on these topics.

All-Star Season by T.S. Yavin is a book about baseball that will appeal to readers ages 10 and up. Brothers Reuven and Avi have two strong bonds – the solidity of their Jewish family life and their passionate love of baseball. Reuven, a pitcher, is desperately working for a spot on the end-of-season All-Star team and is willing to ignore the advice of his parents and even involve his younger brother in his campaign to succeed. The tensions leading to the big game and its surprise outcome will satisfy all young baseball fans.

Do you have a favorite book about sports?

Try these:
Jewish Sports Stars
Sasha Cohen

A Visit from author Chris Nicola

Last week, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas hosted author Chris Nicola at their annual Yom HaShoah program. Chris is the author of Kar-Ben's award-winning book The Secret of Priest's Grotto. The Kar-Ben/Lerner offices are Minneapolis and we were lucky to have him stop by and visit before the event. (L to R: Publisher Joni Sussman, Lerner Founder Harry Lerner, Chris Nicola, and me. Photo by Todd Strand.)

Over 750 people came to the event to hear Chris speak about how the Stermer family lived for over 300 days in a series of caves in the Ukraine, without the modern equipment and knowledge required for cave exploration.

I have been working with Chris for four years yet was never able to meet him in person. It was a thrill to meet Chris and see his program, a very personal and moving account of how he connected with the survivors and their families and combined his love of caving and relationship with this family into a lifelong mission to preserve their story.

To invite Chris to your school or community, please email publicity@karben.com.

Links I Like

We hope everyone had a fun Purim! I just wanted to pass on some interesting links and stories that came across my path this week.

PB Junkies is featuring our new book Picnic at Camp Shalom all week! Check out an interview with author Jacqueline Jules, learn how illustrator Deborah Melmon was inspired by camp memories, and enter the giveaway for a free copy of the book!

Who knew that Top Chef Stephanie Izard’s favorite snack is matzah? She shares recipes with CNN’s Eatocracy. (Not kosher but might inspire you to cook creatively if you’re one who gets sick of eating matzah during Passover)

If I can get to New York sometime this summer, I’d love to see the Maira Kalman exhibit at the Jewish Museum. While I’m there, I also want to check out the Houdini exhibit, since I just finished Carter Beats the Devil, a novel about magicians in the 1920s.

Singer-songwriter Jewel posted a new song she’s working on for her upcoming children’s album. It’s called "Sammy the Spider" (unrelated to our little guy) but we’re excited to hear the finished song!

Over at the Lerner Books blog, we remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which happened 100 years ago today. This industrial accident resulted in 146 deaths, many of them young Jewish immigrants, and transformed workers rights and industrial safety regulations.

About.com’s Grandparents Guide has posted wonderful reviews of our books that feature grandparents and intergenerational stories.

Any links you'd like to share? Feel free to leave a comment. Happy reading!

The Real Yuvi

Kar-Ben is proud to announce the release of new books for Spring 2011! One standout is Yuvi's Candy Tree by Lesley Simpson. We asked Lesley to shed some light on her inspiration for writing the book. Thanks Lesley!

Yuvi’s Candy Tree is a fictional story based on the true story of Yuvi Tashome.

In Ethiopia, Yuvi Tashome’s name was Yeuvmert which, in Amharic, means “a good or beautiful product.” Yuvi was given a Hebrew name when she moved to Israel. To recover her history, she reclaimed her name, but shortened it to Yuvi.

Tashome escaped from Ethiopia to a Sudanese refugee camp. She was later airlifted to Israel as part of Operation Moses, one of several secret rescue operations in the 1980s and 1990s.

Israel’s Law of Return says Jews have the right to return to Israel. The Ethiopian Jews viewed Israel as their home. But they risked their lives to return. Thousands died on the way. Their journey was dangerous because of murder, disease, poor health and prejudice.

I first met Tashome during Passover when Jews tell the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. Tashome had come to Toronto as a guest of the New Israel Fund. The New Israel Fund was trying to raise awareness about the challenges faced by the Ethiopian Jews in Israel. She had just completed the American part of her speaking tour when the American economy collapsed. But she remained hopeful.

Tashome had created a program in Israel in the neighborhood where she lived to try to keep high-risk Ethiopian youth in school. The kids were facing prejudice as well as a difficulty adjusting from a rural economy into high tech culture. During that evening, she told how she escaped from Ethiopia on a donkey with her grandmother. I wanted to learn more. I later set up a private interview with her in Toronto. I had just hosted my first Seder. When Tashome told her story I felt as if the Haggadah was literally coming alive before my eyes. Here was a real woman, now a mother, pregnant with her next child, eating matzah for breakfast, who had survived against impossible odds, and was now working to make the world a better place for her community.

I wanted to honor her story, and celebrate her life.

Lesley Simpson is a Canadian journalist and picture book writer. Her previous books include The Shabbat Box and The Purim Surprise. Lesley has taught journalism and creative writing at Canadian universities. She lives in Toronto, Canada.