What's Hot? What's Not?
Heidi Estrin here, guest posting for the convention blog. This morning we held our annual double session, "Jewish Children's Literature: What's Hot? What's Not?" in which members of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee discuss the Jewish children's books published during the last year. As always, the session was lively with no punches pulled!
We discussed "middle of the road" books - things that were not good enough to be included on our Notable Books list, but still had some merit (at least according to the reviewer taking the "hot" position). The book that probably produced the strongest reactions among panelists and audience members was You Are So NOT Invited to my Bat Mitzvah by Fiona Rosenberg. On the "hot" side, it's true that there are many materialistic shallow kids out there, and why shouldn't there by light "chick lit" fluff for them (adults have The Jap Chronicles, after all). On the "not" side, the characters feed into (glorify?) the crazed "bar mitzvah culture" that we've all seen in our local temples (and that is exemplified in the new movie Keeping Up with the Steins, which I haven't seen yet but am very curious about). We also heard from a member of the audience that Fiona Rosenberg is not a real person (or at least not her real name), so the book loses credibility on that count. BUT... you'll have to judge for yourself!
The committee was selling the annual compilation of reviews (on CD-ROM) written during the year as we judged all entries, and this was for sale in a packet that also included gold and silver seals, a booklist, a book award brochure, a set of bookmarks. This $15 packet will still be available after convention, so if you want one, email Heidi Estrin at heidi@cbiboca.org. We also had book award posters for sale from Lisa Silverman - I don't have her email address on hand, but you can get information about ordering the poster at www.SydneyTaylorBookAward.org.
Sarah Darer Littman, author of Confessions of a Closet Catholic, our gold medalist in the Older REaders category, was there to give a talk during the session, and she was entertaining and personable. I'm going to sign off now and let her post about her experience here at AJL! (I'm just sorry I don't have a photo for you of Sarah in her tiara!)
We discussed "middle of the road" books - things that were not good enough to be included on our Notable Books list, but still had some merit (at least according to the reviewer taking the "hot" position). The book that probably produced the strongest reactions among panelists and audience members was You Are So NOT Invited to my Bat Mitzvah by Fiona Rosenberg. On the "hot" side, it's true that there are many materialistic shallow kids out there, and why shouldn't there by light "chick lit" fluff for them (adults have The Jap Chronicles, after all). On the "not" side, the characters feed into (glorify?) the crazed "bar mitzvah culture" that we've all seen in our local temples (and that is exemplified in the new movie Keeping Up with the Steins, which I haven't seen yet but am very curious about). We also heard from a member of the audience that Fiona Rosenberg is not a real person (or at least not her real name), so the book loses credibility on that count. BUT... you'll have to judge for yourself!
The committee was selling the annual compilation of reviews (on CD-ROM) written during the year as we judged all entries, and this was for sale in a packet that also included gold and silver seals, a booklist, a book award brochure, a set of bookmarks. This $15 packet will still be available after convention, so if you want one, email Heidi Estrin at heidi@cbiboca.org. We also had book award posters for sale from Lisa Silverman - I don't have her email address on hand, but you can get information about ordering the poster at www.SydneyTaylorBookAward.org.
Sarah Darer Littman, author of Confessions of a Closet Catholic, our gold medalist in the Older REaders category, was there to give a talk during the session, and she was entertaining and personable. I'm going to sign off now and let her post about her experience here at AJL! (I'm just sorry I don't have a photo for you of Sarah in her tiara!)
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