Children's Books, and Other Cool Stuff

The Conference       I am a Jew this quote has been said many times over the years. Yesterday I spent a whole day in a book conference in Temple Emanu-El on east 65th street. It is a much smaller conference then SCBWI but it is very specific to the topic of Jewish books. The market is starting to rise now. This conference had many great speakers including agents, Editors, authors, publishers, the Sydney Taylor awards, Jewish Book  Council and PJ library All the speakers I listed above made wonderful speeches. They focused on the usual stuff. Everyone is looking for a fresh voice, great characters, wonderful dialog and Jewish themed books. What are Jewish themed books you ask. "Look at them as a table with five legs" one publisher said. Family, holidays, Community, Hebrew language and the leg of Israel. All these topics were covered and discussed closely. What does it mean to be a Jew?      I was born in Russia and was a Jewish refugee when Ronald Reagan made a deal with

We just finished celebrating Halloween. Your children dressed in wonderful costumes, you walked from house to house getting candy, your schools had parties and ton of candy was given away. This holiday was celebrated all over the country and probably in other countries as well. Last post I shared with you where Halloween came from and the folklore behind it but today I will take a larger step. I will look at how public libraries celebrated this holiday. A few days ago I did a massive survey on a list called pub lib and asked a very simple question How does your library celebrate Halloween. I got a massive response to this question and have decided to give a list of 10 most unique stories that came from this list. This post will not have any book reviews and lets say I will catalog this under Cool Stuff . Please enjoy my list of 10. 1)  The year we had the ground breaking for our building the same day as the Halloween parade so that as soon as that parade was over we had our par