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Here at BookishlyJewish we are preparing to start featuring books in translation. So we were thrilled to sit down with Jessica Kirzane and learn about her work as a translator, including how books are selected for translation and published. Read on to discover more!

BookishlyJewish: I am so excited to learn more about book translation and how it works! How did you get involved in the field?

Jessica Kirzane: When I was a graduate student working on a PhD in Yiddish literature – as a non-native Yiddish speaker who was still learning Yiddish as I was trying to analyze it in a critical way – I found myself turning to translation as a way to express to myself my comprehension, and my interpretation, of the texts I was reading. This was initially a personal practice to support my reading and force myself to slow down and spend time with the texts in close detail. I discovered quickly that I loved translation! I appended a translation of a short story to a term paper I had written on the story, and my instructor told me that the translation itself was excellent (he was less enthusiastic about the term paper, if I remember correctly) and I should consider pursuing translation. Maybe that was a veiled insult, or even an example of a certain kind of academic sexism in which translation work is considered supporting or supplemental to the “more seriou”s work of literary analysis, like women academics have sometimes been treated as supporting figures to “more serious” male academics. But I took it as a compliment anyway, and when I finished my PhD I applied to a translation fellowship at the Yiddish Book Center.

This was a life-changing opportunity to learn about the nuts and bolts of translation and to understand myself as a translator who could interpret and represent an entire book-length translation, something I probably never would have attempted without this extra vote of confidence. Through this program, I came to understand what it meant to see literary translation as an act of literary creation, and to develop my own voice as a translator. I could see how each word in the original bears with it a constellation of connotations and associations, possibilities that a translator has to either recreate or choose from in order to craft a new text that stands on its own terms.

BookishlyJewish: How many books have you translated and what languages do you work in?

Jessica Kirzane: I translate from Yiddish to English. I have translated three books, all by popular Yiddish writer Miriam Karpilove: Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle Against Free Love (Syracuse UP 2020), Judith (Farlag Press 2022), and A Provincial Newspaper and Other Stories (Syracuse UP 2023). In addition I have translated many short stories and poems that have appeared in literary journals and anthologies – some of the writers I have translated include Yente Serdatsky, Pessie Hershfeld Pomerants, Joseph Opatoshu, and Dora Schulner.

BookishlyJewish: How does the selection process work? Do you approach an author, does a publisher approach you, or is there some other permutation I haven’t thought of?

Jessica Kirzane: Generally, I choose what to translate by reading as much as I can. Whenever I read in Yiddish, I always have in the back of my mind the question, “Will I translate this?” Often if I think something would be fun, interesting, or meaningful to translate, I’ll try my hand at a few paragraphs and see how it feels in my language. Sometimes that’s as far as I’ll go – even if I like it, I feel satisfied in having engaged with it just as a personal experiment.

Sometimes I decide to move forward. Often that’s because I feel that the text needs a champion, that English language readers should have access to it and I’m a good person to help them reach the text. In my case (with a few rare exceptions) the author is often no longer living. I have to look for existing relatives because they often hold the rights for the original, and ask them for permission to publish a translation. I then pitch the translation to a journal or to a press, usually when it’s already finished, or in the case of the books when I at least have quite a bit of the text already translated and in good shape. I have never been approached by a publisher – but if anyone out there is reading this and wants to approach me, I’m all ears!

BookishlyJewish: I imagine there are many moments when translation also requires interpretation of the authors meaning. How do you resolve these ambiguities in writing?

Jessica Kirzane: I can’t remember who told me this, so I can’t give credit specifically, but in one of the workshops at the Yiddish Book Center translation fellowship I remember being taught that a good translator has to make decisions and interpretations. If the original is ambiguous, you have to decide on what you think it means, and try to convey that (even if you want to convey it in a way that is also ambiguous, to match the original). You have to know why you are writing it the way you are. If you are unsure, your readers will be unsure, and even confused. Your original author wasn’t unsure – they made a choice. You have to be an author too, and make your own choices, because that’s what makes a good piece of writing.

BookishlyJewish: How much involvement does the original author have (if they are still alive obviously)? Do you consult them during the work?

Jessica Kirzane: I very rarely work with an original author (as I mentioned above). Recently, however, I have translated a few poems by contemporary Yiddish poets. In that case, I have sent my translations to the poet, who has sometimes given me feedback. Sometimes there’s a back-and-forth: the poet is the expert on the poem in its original, but I am the expert on the English version, and on what I’m trying to do with it. I am thinking about the connotations of the words in English and how I imagine they might land with my readers. Maybe I made a change to create a particular rhythm or sound that I feel works for the English version. I don’t simply take the author’s suggestions as corrections. I see them as an opportunity to have a clarifying conversation about how the poet and I both understand the words and their weight.

I did have one very fun interaction, as it were, with the author I have translated most – Miriam Karpilove. She died in the 1950s, so of course it wasn’t a conventional back-and-forth with an author, but it was sort of like that! I had already translated Karpilove’s novella Judith when I realized that in her archive at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research there was an unpublished manuscript of Karpilove’s self-translation of the novella into English! I did a side-by-side comparison of my translation and hers, and sometimes I took her “suggestions” because they clarified something I hadn’t fully understood or I simply preferred her turn of phrase. But her writing in English felt much more formal than mine, and I was confident in my version as one that would be more readable for today’s readers. It felt like having a conversation about translation with the author, albeit a delayed one.

BookishlyJewish: What credentials does a translator need?

Jessica Kirzane: The bottom line is that a translator needs to translate well. There are MA programs for translation, there are courses in translation, there are conferences and workshops and collectives, and I heartily recommend participating in all these things – having a community you can bounce your ideas off of is not only helpful but absolutely life-giving. There’s nothing as satisfying as being in a room full of translators who can talk together about shades of meaning around a particular phrase. But there isn’t a specific qualification or requirement.

BookishlyJewish: Yiddish is a language full of idioms that carry meaning only from the years of tradition that created them. How do you adequately convey those meanings in another language?

Jessica Kirzane: I think any language has its own idioms and its own cultural and historical context and specificity. The crux of translation is to try to remain true to that cultural specificity while also making the text understood for a new audience. You can do that in a variety of ways: sometimes with footnotes or glossaries to support your including information (such as words from the original, or cultural references) that might not be readily comprehensible to your readers, sometimes by expanding the sentences to include explanations where the original doesn’t have to. For me, a question is always whether I am correctly conveying the tone of the original – is it chatty and lighthearted in the original? Is it formal? Is a particular word that comes from Hebrew there because the author is trying to convey something about tradition or religion, or was it simply a commonplace word and the most apt word the author could think of? Knowing, or deciding, when something is so specific and its specificity is so central to the idea of the original text that it needs to be preserved in the translation is a tricky thing – but I don’t think that’s unique to Yiddish.

BookishlyJewish: I always end by asking if you have a favorite Jewish book

Jessica Kirzane: I have so many favorite books! My favorite book for today, though – just for this very minute – is Yerra Sugarman’s Aunt Bird. It’s a recent book of poetry in which the poet tries to connect to an aunt she never met, who died in the Holocaust, through imagining the texture of her aunt’s emotional life. There’s something sort of translation-like in the poet’s attempts to reach across an enormous gulf and think, or feel, herself into her aunt’s mind. It’s a beautiful book – I hope your audience will give it a read.

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Diary of A Lonely Girl: Bookshop |Amazon

A Provincial newspaper and Other Stories: Bookshop| Amazon

A little while ago I was presented with some feedback on a manuscript – the two points of view were too similar. It was suggested that I sit down and and work through how each character thinks and ensure that was reflected in the pages. Not so much their turns of phrase or character traits, but what actually makes their brains tick. I wasn’t entirely certain how to go about that so I took a break to refill the creative well. As is often the case, the break turned out to be the solution. Because I picked up my copy of Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop by Joshua S. Levy and in this MG sci fi about two bar mitzvah boys, I found exactly the lesson I needed to fix my female only, adult, romcom. Because good writing is good writing, no matter the genre.

The book features two boys – Finn and Ezra – who are stuck in a time loop, doomed to repeat their bar mitzvah weekends forever. These two boys live in completely different worlds. Finn is an only child with doting parents, attends public school, and appears to practice reform Judaism. Ezra, on the other hand, has a house full of siblings competing for his parents attention, attends an all boys yeshiva, and is ultra orthodox. These differences, however, are NOT what most sets them apart. When I opened a chapter I could immediately tell whose head I was in, even without a label, because of the different way these boys move through the world. Finn is scientific, his mind whirring a million miles a minute, even if it leaves him a little callous to the feelings of those around him. He has tried every angle and every experience possible to try and break out of the loop. Ezra is more laid back, worried about his family but not so much his mishna, and just goes with the flow. He wants out of the loop, but it never occurs to him to try and break out. He doesn’t even try and use his knowledge of the weekend to get a better grade on the mishna test he has taken five hundred times. He just keeps circling “C”. Yet he still cares about what happens to the people in his lopp – even if they will forget it all the next day.

The combination of these two personalities is hilarity in itself. Obviously, they each have something to learn from the other, and things to learn about their own lives that only become apparent as they provide fresh eyes towards each others loops, but the ways in which they try to break out of the loop are so creative I had to laugh. The side characters are well utilized and the bank robbing sequence – yes you read that correctly, bank robbing is a thing here – is genius. Even the small throw away lines were guaranteed to make the reader smile. I got some pretty serious side eye for the way I laughed out loud when the boys approach Ezra’s Rabbi for help with a scheme and he suggested the boys seek the greatest reward – learning Torah! It was just so exactly what many youth Rabbi’s would say, really spot-on.

Like any time loop book, the trickiest part is the introduction of the loop itself. I was a bit disoriented at first but eventually caught on. So the reader should just plow through the first few pages and settle in. I had no issue fully integrating into both characters worlds but I will say I’m better equipped than the average reader to understand the goings on in Ezra’s synagogue and family so I can’t comment on how a complete stranger to many Jewish rituals and customs would find those aspects of the story. I enjoy when a story is not written for an outside gaze and this one trusted the reader enough to provide a fully immersive experience without overdoing the explanations.

I’m a huge fan of Jews from different religious backgrounds working together. I loved seeing this partnership in the book and how both of the boys observance is reflected on the page, but most of all I enjoyed seeing the world through Finn and Ezra’s eyes. Because even though they are both thirteen year old boys trapped in the exact same weekend, their takes on the situation were so vastly different. It is that fullness of character development through viewpoint details and actions that I hope to achieve when I turn back to my own work.

I received an e-arc of this book from the author

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All right friends, today things are getting a little wild on the blog. When I receive communications from publishers, authors, or marketing professionals I am nothing if not honest. I’m willing to take a look at almost anything so long as it has even a minute amount of Jewish content, but I am a slow reader and I never promise a review. For one thing, life is busy and thoughtful reading takes time. For another, there are some genres that rarely are a hit with me. Horror is the one I struggle with the most. I’m trying to expand our picture book and nonfiction offerings. But poetry? I never made a statement about that because, unless it’s a novel in verse, it is so far removed from my typical reading and writing it never occurred to me to review it here. 

So how did I come to be reviewing Eleanor Lerman’s seventh poetry collection, Slim Blue Universe? The publicist put it though our Suggest a Book form and I was feeling adventurous at the time. Also, much like the title promises, it is a slim volume so it’s not like I was investing a tremendous amount of time. Lastly, the cover is a deep navy blue with wonderful, universe-representing, celestial graphics. Everyone knows I’m a sucker for aesthetically pleasing, space, astronomy, or celestial type stuff. So I said I’d give the book a try. 

No, I did not miraculously come to an understanding of rhyme and meter, nor did my abstract thinking suddenly improve to the point where I can parse these poems with ease. This is not that kind of review. I fully admit that I could not read a single piece straight through and feel confident that I understood it. That’s not the books fault, that’s on me and my limited skill set. It has occurred with any poetry I am fool enough to approach. 

So why then am I writing a review? Isn’t BookishlyJewish a site for recommendations only? Well, not understanding doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time. In fact, I’m not entirely convinced poetry is meant to be understood. The people who claim to do so are usually the type of academics who have degrees in extremely obscure subjects and select their thesis topics based on how few people will be interested in them. For me, and probably ninety percent of the reading universe, understanding is not the point. For us plebeians, poetry is about feeling. 

Slim Blue Universe has several sections, and a few references to Judaism, but reading across the poems I had certain recurrent emotions. I found myself reflecting on getting older and also my social media use. How much is it worth engaging with a wide anonymously audience vs. a smaller in person one? What will my legacy be when I die? Do I even want a legacy? When did I stop being young? You get the point. It was a ponderous Shabbat to say the least. 

Are these the thoughts the author intended for me to have? I have no idea. I can never confidently say that for any fiction book either. This is a book review website, not a class in divination. What I can say is, Slim Blue Universe was a quick read that left me with lots of not so quick thoughts to mull over. Some of the turns of phrase and metaphors were very beautiful. Others went right over my head. Will I venture further into reading poetry? Hard to say. But I’d hate for that pretty book to get lonely on my shelf. 

BookishlyJewish received an arc of this book from the publicist

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I’ve read almost every kind of fantasy. Some for the exciting new magic systems or secondary worlds, and others for the familiarity of well worn tropes that represent a comfort read. Portal fantasy is typically the latter. As such it can be a pretty hard sell for agents and editors. Therefore, I’ve never written it. My personal form of self flagellation in that regard is YA sci fi, which I insist on writing despite everyone insisting it is unsalable, but I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that Portals are as old as the fantasy genre itself, have a devoted readership, but must to do something really special to make it through trad pub. The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan managed to do just that while also introducing a host of intriguing characters, a very strong voice, and a plot so layered it might as well be an archeological dig. 

While there are many viewpoints in The Pomegranate Gate, the two major characters we need to concern ourselves with are Toba, a young lady from a formerly wealthy family who has a host of mysterious talents and ailments, and Naftaly, the world’s worst tailor. Both find themselves fleeing home as an inquisition forces all Jews to leave or convert. Along the journey, Toba manages to fall through a portal into a world of Maziks and discovers some answers about her past. Meanwhile Naftaly seems to feel the need to rescue her and discovers some hidden things about himself too. 

Therein ends my plot summary, because as I mentioned before, there are so many twists and turns, layers upon layers, I will get hopelessly lost trying to be succinct about it. In fact, I would dearly love to see the one page synopsis the author created if she queried this traditionally because condensing this epic into that form would be evidence of true magic. 

Moving on, I’d like to focus on the things I enjoyed the most about The Pomegranate Gate. There’s a system of lucid dreaming in the Mazik world, where these dreams are shared and can impact reality, that was fascinating and also used to great effect in the plot. Then we come to voice. Toba, who feels neurodivergent to me but is never given a label, manages to split herself into two and we get to spend time in both Toba’s heads. In a true show of skill, Kaplan manages to give them separate and distinct voices. In fact, if the splitting of Toba wasn’t so necessary for the plot, I might have thought she was just showing off. Because the SAME PERSON having such distinct personalities and thoughts was kind of awesome. 

Most intriguing of all is how Kaplan pulls off a kind of steamy romance without any actual heat on the page or off. When Naftaly finally figures out he’s never felt desirous of a wife because he, as the reader has suspected for some time, is interested in the other gender, there is a very compelling romance. The yearning is palpable. Even kind of hot. Yet it’s a very low heat book. Forget sex, there’s barely kissing. Somehow it works, even for a person such as myself who typically likes to bring all the heat to romance.

Much like the worlds employed by this book, there are touches of the familiar in the plot, but also stuff that is so unique. Even before anyone steps through any portal the book presents us with a completely Jewish magic system and a community of both humans and magical beings in line with Jewish folklore. It was a comfort read, but also a page turner. Which shouldn’t be shocking since the book does hint that combinations can indeed be superior to their original components. 

Basically – for any writer that’s ever been confused when an agents or editor says something is a tough sell but they’ll be willing to take it on if it does something completely new and different, this is the textbook from which to learn what they mean. It’s a portal that utilizes all the best tropes of portals. It will meet your portal expectations. But it will also be totally different from what you expected. What magic is this?

BookishlyJewish requests a review copy from the publisher, and I believe they attempted to send one, but it never arrived so I took it out from the library. I will always find books one way or another. It just takes longer.

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There’s something about the “writing community” that has bothered me for a long time. For a group of people that claim to be interested in social justice and improving access and equity, we sure have a real elitist set up for accessing certain aspects of said community. To me, if you have written a thing, whether you intend to publish it or not, you’re a writer/author. You should be able to enter into conversation about that without having to pass a bevvy of tests. Alas, that often isn’t how it works. Got an agent? Awesome! But you still can’t join that private discord until you have a publishing contract. Oh, you have a contract? Awesome! But unless you’re a lead title at a big five your opinions aren’t worth much and you should stay quietly lurking in the corner. Went indie or self-published? That’s so lovely for you, but our debut group isn’t interested in that right now. And don’t get me started on what it means for a writer to be told “no response is no” from some agents who are simply “too busy” to extend the courtesy of a one line form rejection to queries.

While there are many oases of kindness, they are unfortunately exceptions to the rule that plays itself out on social media over and over for the discerning observer to spot. I have never seen anything so hilariously sad as the author who desperately tried to backtrack after she showed her entire rear end by stating that she was “an actual author” only after her big five published book was out. Way to anger half the readership and almost everyone who might help market said big five published book. I’ve been pretty lucky in my publishing journey, but it still grates on me to watch this happen, because I’m not big on prestige based societies that require applicants to figure out an arbitrary secret set of rules that nobody will even talk about. Which is why I absolutely adored Leigh Bardugo’s dark, adult, contemporary, paranormal Ninth House. 

The story involves Alex Stern, the most unlikely of candidates, finding herself enrolled at Yale. Only it’s not the regular Yale that run of the mill students enjoy. Alex’s Yale is a Yale that includes secret magical societies which only a select elite student body has access to. How does Alex, a former teen runaway whose last known associates were drug dealers that died under suspicious circumstances, find herself in such rarefied company? Well, all those behavior and mental health issues that lead to her downward spiral in life were caused by her exceptionally rare ability to see ghosts. 

Alex is recruited to Lethe, the society established in order to police the other societies, as her unique gifts make her well positioned for a job in containing the supernatural. Turns out, her mysterious benefactors at Lethe have been aware of her abilities for a while, but as Alex is quick to point out, they did absolutely nothing to help her until they thought she could be useful to them. Rather than being grateful and taking orders, Alex pushes back against any narrative that establishes her as the unworthy recipient of generosity from such a saintly group and points out their flawed ethics every chance she gets. And she is absolutely right to do so, because mixing magic of epic proportions with young adults that have known nothing but a life of privilege in which they have never met a real consequence is – shock! – not such a great idea.

What everyone else sees as a normal extension of the natural social order, Alex sees as some of the worst moral corruption in existence. And the reader is hard pressed not to agree when viewing the world through Alex’s outsider eyes. Some of the uses these coeds put magic to are stomach churning, including the opening scene in which an undomiciled person’s mental illness is used as a cover for subjecting them to magical experimentation and undesired surgeries. Remember that freshman orientation speech about consent and what drugs and alcohol can do to that scenario? Now imagine there’s mind altering magic in the mix. Yet nobody, including the adult alumnae of these societies, seems to care so long as the magic and the money keep flowing- until the bodies start showing up. That, unfortunately, they cannot ignore.

Alex is like a dog with a bone, refusing to let go of the investigation into magical corruption even when she is ordered to stand down. I was able to spot the major plot twists, the red herring, and the ultimate villain coming from a mile away. What kept me reading Ninth House was not the plot. It was Alex and her constant refusal to play by anyone else’s rules. It was pure joy to watch her gain the upper hand in several situations simply for doing things nobody thought she would do. Because they grew up rich and with certain expectations from life. Thanks to Lethe’s staunch refusal to intervene and help Alex when she first began to see ghosts, Alex grew up fighting.

I can’t help but think about the current nature of traditional publishing and the million of ailments that plague it. It is an institution almost as bloated as this fictionalized version of Yale with offenses that grow ever more egregious while everyone pretends that this is totally normal. It is now common for editors to ghost submissions, publishers are slicing up advances into smaller and smaller installments, and allocation of marketing funds and support is such a black box that the CEO of Simon and Schuster stated under oath that there’s a reason the word “random” is included in the name of Penguin Random House. Not to mention the idea that authors works can be fed willy nilly into AI, often without their consent, to actively train their “replacement.” Meanwhile, authors are told they must follow a specific set of rules, be patient, and take what crumbs they are offered, or nobody will give them a key to the castle. Well, perhaps it’s time we all took a page from Alex’s book and point out that the castle is, in fact, on fire.

The language of Ninth House is dark and gritty which fits the setting and overall vibe. There is a cool use of ladino as a diaspora language having special power over the dead. But most of all, it was satisfying to read about someone who actually has the guts to look privilege in the eye and give it the middle finger. Because maybe it’s not always worth the self flagellation required for the chance at being condescended to in elite social circles. This book will light a fire in you. Don’t let it be for nothing. 

There are many valid paths to publishing, and they’ve been quite good to me as a whole, but I can’t help but notice what goes on around me. Maybe because like Alex, I did not grow in the soil from which the publishing elite springs. No MFA. No Iowa writers course. No Clarion or Viable Paradise workshops. No invitations to fancy exclusive discords (although huge shout outs to all the Jewish writer Discords that are open to all and welcomed me. Same goes for Dream Foundry and the like. You do good work!). So I take great pains to look at ALL options available to me without judging any as more prestigious or better than the other, and when any of them start prioritizing corporate profit over the creatives on whose existence they depend for their very life’s blood, there is a problem. Sometimes it just takes an outsider to see it. 

So what can we do about it? Well, in preparation for the sequel (which I am excited to read) Alex forms a posse. Maybe we can stop judging each other for going trad or indie, having an agent or not, being big five vs. small house, six figure or no advance. Maybe we can try and acknowledge that we are all people striving to create in an environment that is often hostile. Writing relationships shouldn’t be about what we can get from one another but how we can support each other. There’s power in numbers. Kaminando kon buenos.

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There comes a time during the writing process for every one of my books when everyone but me, the writer of record, knows what needs to happen. My critique partners, agent, heck even my non-writer friends can plainly point out what I need to do to fix the narrative. Yet it still takes me weeks, kicking and screaming, to see what was right in front of my face the whole time. In this, I resemble Josie Star, heroine of Rebecca’s Crowley’s latest m/f romance, Texas Cowboy Sweetheart.

Josie opens the book with a bang, quitting her high powered corporate job without hesitation in order to take over The Lone Star Ranch from her father after he is injured. Josie has known her whole life she was destined to take over ranch management, and had been preparing for this moment, so it shouldn’t come as surprise to anyone when she assumes ownership. Yet somehow, ranch foreman Easton, who just so happens to be Josie’s childhood best friend, still manages to feel gut punched that he was never in the running for a higher role and potential ownership at The Lone Star.

While Josie has been far away attending college and climbing the corporate ladder, Easton’s been managing the day to day at The Lone Star. Now his absentee best friend is also his boss. Awkward much? Wait until he realizes he’s also in love with her. Yes, this is a best friends to lovers book that also manages to be a non exploitative and completely consensual boss/employee relationship. The romance is medium heat to me, with two explicit sex scenes.

Easton and Josie are so painfully perfect for each other that everyone else, including Josie’s three sisters, realize they should be a couple. It still takes them some time to come around to it though. Both have their own complicated pasts and emotional hook ups, but when they finally find a way through that baggage, the pay off is almost as good as finally untangling that plot snarl and managing to do the thing my characters need when I’m writing. Because Easton and Josie obviously need each other.

I loved that the setting was not one where most people typically expect to find a Jewish family. Josie very clearly identifies as Jewish and has her own ways of celebrating and observing that fact. The author clearly knows a thing or two about ranching, and Josie also represent a strong female presence in a male dominated industry. I would, however, council that this may not be the book for vegetarians. Every time we met a cute calf I was painfully aware that it was most likely being raised for food purposes. Especially with all the talk of beef prices.

This is the first in a series, and I expect each of the Star sisters we have met in this book will have their chance to shine. In addition, a subplot about family secrets and antisemitism experienced by the girls mother after she converted will hopefully be more fleshed out in the upcoming books. The seeds for a fine series are planted here.

Note: BookishlyJewish received a free e-arc from the author in the hopes we would review it.

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Today we are bringing you a cover reveal for With A Good Eye by Gila Green.

About the book:

Luna Levi is an ordinary 19 year old with extraordinary problems. Her mother’s acting career is more important to her than the stage of real life. Her father struggles with PTSD as an ex-combat soldier and is equally MIA when it comes to his daughter. The Levis jump from financial crisis to financial crisis until in one-split second someone enters their lives and throws them into the biggest disaster of all. When Luna tries to warn her mother, she is pushed aside and it’s the first hint that her mother has every intention of going full steam ahead with a partner who lies – about everything.  

Can you ever save anyone but yourself? 

Do any of us ever really leave home? 

And here is the cover, designed by AOS Publishing, Montreal

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There’s a concept in both the written and visual arts called the Easter egg, in which the artist includes small hints or tidbits for those in their fandom to find. These references will completely fly over the heads of most readers, but for those in the know, it can add a whole new layer of complexity by providing additional activities for the reader to engage in over subsequent reads. I love the concept, but I don’t feel comfortable using a term involving a Christian holiday when it comes to my Jewish themed work. I was therefore thrilled to learn that several Jewish authors describe this concept in their work as an “Afikomen” instead, after the piece of matzah that is hidden during the Passover seder, and then hunted down by Seder participants. 

In Afikoman, Where’d You Go, the two concepts meet – with the story being about a literal Afikomen, but also involving hidden pictures for the reader to find. 

At their best, picture books allow both the text and the illustration to tell part of the story. Ideally, one aspect cannot work without the other. In addition, it is my preference that while books are being read by a caregiver (or in some adorable situations an older child who knows how to read) the child being read to should be to interact with the the story through the illustration. In Afikoman Where’d You Go?, there is a story for the adults to follow and read but the main activity actually belongs to the child searching the illustrations for hidden matzah. 

The story follows the children gathered at a Seder as they search for a very sneaky Afikomen. On each page an animated Afikomen is indeed hiding amongst the diverse Seder participants and the readers must find it. I can attest that having taken my copy of the book out into the wild and read it to children, or observed them reading to each other, that they really enjoy this hide and seek aspect of the book. There were races to see who would find the matzah first and a lot of consternation when it becomes apparent that the Afikomen is actually slated to be eaten! 

The sneaky Afikomen manages to avoid the fate of being consumed and the children, both in the book and in real life, were delighted to follow its exploits. The book was interactive and likely to be easier for parents to read over and over again than books without this additional element. The only complaint I received was from children confused as to why I was reading them a Passover book before it was even Purim yet. Overall, that’s a pretty high praise from a tough to please age demographic. 

Note: BookishlyJewish received a copy of the book from the publisher after it was suggested in our Suggest A Book form.

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As you might imagine, given my current role on this website, I read a lot. I also read more widely across genres than I used to, which has been a real gift to my personal growth as a writer. It’s engaging and informative, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but it also means I’m fairly hard to surprise when it comes to what a book can and cannot do. So I was delighted when To & Fro, a literary novel that is actually two separate stories, by Leah Hager Cohen, managed to subvert my expectations at every stage of the reading process.

This novel was mysterious from the get go. It appeared on my radar when someone filled out our Suggest A Book form, but unlike most forms which are filled out by either the author or their publicity and/or marketing teams, this form came from an unidentified fan who had seen early versions of the novel. May we all have critique partners and early readers who are so dedicated to our work. Or rather, may we all write such wonderful stories as to inspire the kind of devotion that has the reader going online and spending the time to fill out forms recommending the story to reviewers.

Then came the physical book itself. When I said earlier that To & Fro comprises two stories, I was not kidding. When I slid the book out of its packaging envelope I saw a lovely blue cover featuring a mirror. Then I flipped it over to read the back cover copy and instead found the exact same cover, only with a yellow background. What was going on? Turns out this is two mirrored narratives each starting from a different end of the book – you literally have to flip it over to read the next one – and they meet in the middle. There was also a little note explaining how the book came to be published, including a description of how Cohen tried to force the narratives to be interlocking in a bid to please traditional publishers, only to find her acceptance with an editor who gently suggested they be printed separately, as she had originally intended.

In one narrative, conveniently labelled “To,” we follow a young girl named Ani who is living in circumstances that are obviously fictional. In fact, she is meant to be living inside Kafka’s parable “My Destinaition,” following the man on the horse who hears the bugles call. Ani’s journey is full of what the reader recognizes as unusual kindness from strangers, but Ani’s past is so full of unusual cruelty and misplaced guilt it takes her a while to get on the same page as the rest of us. She is not given any particular religion, nor are the people around her, but when she finds herself in a study house full of people debating and arguing an endless story, of which we are all part, the parallels to Judaism are unmistakable. As is the resemblance of Ani’s past to a gender flipped biblical story of Ishmael.

By contrast, the other story, “Fro,” follows Annamae, who is very obviously Jewish, and rapidly approaching puberty in Manhattan. Annamae is no less lonely or searching than Ani is, but she has both family and a community around her. When Annamae’s struggles to express herself and be understood reach a critical level her mother finds that while medical professionals and school counselors are not helpful, a Rabbi is. Rabbi Harriet first met the family upon the occasion of Annamae’s father’s passing, and is exactly what Annamae needs. Not for spirituality per se, but because Annamae thinks about the world in ways which are most amenable to discussion with a gentle Rabbi who slurps her soup but has the best stories about creation and the Torah.

You can only read a book for the first time once, and by pure chance I started with the “To” narrative. I got a small thrill every time an artifact from “To” suddenly appeared in “Fro” and I found myself linking the stories together, finding how the narratives can be interlocked and interpreted – both separately and together. I was also inspired with so many different ways to write and treat narrative structure in my own work. However, I am deeply curious as to how this book would have felt had I read it the other way round.

That’s not something I can experience on my own. And with that realization, my reading of the novel became communal. If I truly want to know what the experience is like starting from “Fro” I am going to have to find someone who read it in that order. (The cover copy is very clear that starting from either side is acceptable and encouraged). Perhaps that person and I will end up discussing the varying points in the two journeys. We might argue what the significance of say, the ferryman’s wings, is. Indeed we could spend hours on this, much like the members of the study house Ani encounters. The beauty of this is not lost on me.

To & Fro is at its heart a story about loneliness and seeking. It features two girls, in the most vulnerable part of their lives, who are both seeking similar things, in similar ways, despite their dissimilar background and worlds. You can read almost anything you want into this story, but in doing so you join the narrative. It is a book about loneliness that ultimately forms a community from its readers. And that is a feat I have not seen before. I thoroughly enjoyed being surprised by it and look forward to debating it with other readers -perhaps even some of you!

Note: BookishlyJewish received a free arc of this book after requesting one from the publisher.

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The first book in Jamie Krakover’s YA, sci fi Tracker Sequence – Tracker220 – presented unique questions for readers both Jewish and secular. How can tech be integrated into shabbat? How much personal liberty are we willing to sacrifice for interconnectedness? What human enhancements go too far? We reviewed that book HERE and you can read an interview with the author HERE. Today we are excited to bring you a cover reveal for the second book in the sequence – Authority!

Here’s the cover copy:

“Her glitch destroyed their system… or so she thought.

It’s been six months since Kaya, Bailen, and the Ghosts leveraged her glitch to destroy the tracker network. With it came the eradication of the authorities and an end to Rufus Scurry’s secret plans to mind control the world. While Kaya appreciates her recovered sense of privacy and newfound connection to Judaism, millions believe life is worse without trackers.

As the Ghosts deploy old technology to fill the void, people around Kaya begin acting strangely—doing things they don’t have control over. Some, like her ex-boyfriend Harlow, are losing time all together.

When Kaya receives a threat from an unknown user on her deactivated tracker, she seeks to uncover who is behind it and how they are using the old network. But more people are falling victim to the mind control every day, sending Kaya scrambling to end the loophole before she loses everyone she loves to the technology she’s learned to live with.”

And without further ado here is the gorgeous cover, by cover artist Jennifer Stolzer.

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