There is something special about picking up a book and knowing that the author did not spend an hour convincing their publisher not to italicize the Hebrew or agonizing over whether the average reader would know how to pronounce the name Hili. The words are freer to move within this world that is intimately familiar. The characters are more welcoming. The plot lines less “Othering” than what one typically finds in contemporary literature.

That was the gift Faygie Holt’s “Achdus Club” series gives readers. Set in an Orthodox Jewish girls school the books follow the transfer of a new student into the fourth grade class. If you’ve attended such a school, you recognize the upheaval that a new student represents to the tight knit group of friends that have been together since nursery school. Roles are questioned, cliques broken up. The entire social order tilts on its axis. The new addition might as well be an invading alien.

In the book’s case, the new girl, Hili Rosen, causes the Queen Bee Ruthie Somerfield to worry that she will be deposed. Ruthie lashes out predictably but not as viciously as might be seen in a non-orthodox Middle Grade book. As promised by the series title, everything does work out in the end thanks to achdus – the Jewish virtue of togetherness and friendship. In fact, in true Orthodox literature style we do not only get a redemption arc. We get a redemption book. The 5th book in the series follows Ruthie as she and her family face some moves of their own. Still, Holt has a light touch and the moral to the tale never feels forced or unearned.

I recently removed the Jewish adage “Achrona Achrona Chaviva” which roughly translates to “the last one is the dearest” from my own writing. I was afraid it would take gentile readers out of the story too much. Imagine my surprise when there, smiling out at me from the pages of the latest book the Achdus series was that very phrase.

Indeed, the last book was my favorite. I wish those girls well as they move past fourth grade. May they be greeted by a world that always understands how crucial matching Purim costumes are and never mispronounces their names.

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E Broderick is a writer and speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.