Books
However, it’s possible that you live in a place where there is no such shop. If this is the case, may I suggest that you contact MY favorite ATL independent bookstore, Ask for Diane. She’s the bee’s knees.
Of course, if neither of these options tickles your fancy, there are many ways to skin a cat (though not the one from the indie bookstore, for gosh sakes). Just so long as you buy books, books, books! (they don’t have to be MY books. So long as you’re reading…)
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National Jewish Book Award Finalist
Sydney Taylor Notable
Junior Library Guild Selection
LA Public Library Best Books of 2023
Book Riot: Best New Books
CCBC Choices 2024 pick
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A Junior Library Guild Selection!
An Amazon Best Book of the Month!
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A Junior Library Guild Selection!
Starred review in PW!
Starred review in SLJ!
2019 Summer Okra Pick from SIBA!
INDIE NEXT #7, fall 2019!
PW Best Books of 2019!
New York Times Best Books of 2019!
A Mighty Girl Book of the Year!
An ALSC Notable!
WSRA Children’s Literature 2020 Recommendation Lists!
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Starred Review in PW!
Today Show Best Gifts for 5 Year Olds!
A Bank Street Best Book of the Year!
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A Junior Library Guild Selection!
Amazon Best Book of the Month!
Starred Review in Horn Book!
SLJ Best Books of 2019!
Nerdy Book Award Winner!
WSRA Children’s Literature 2020 Recommendation Lists!
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A Junior Library Guild Selection!
ABC Best Books for Young Readers!
Starred review in School Library Journal!
Chicago Public Library “Best of the Best Books (2017)!
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A Junior Library Guild Selection!
A PJ Library Selection!
Starred Review from Booklist!
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National Book Award Long List!
Nerdy Book Award!
ALSC Notable!
A Banks Street Best Book!
ABC Best Books for Young Readers!
AJC’s Best Southern Books of 2017
Brightly’s Best Children’s Books of 2017!
A Mighty Girl’s 2017 Books of the Year!
Chicago Public Library “Best of the Best Books (2017)!
Evanston Public Library’s 101 Great Books for Kids (2017)!
King County Library System Best Books of 2017!
A Junior Library Guild Selection!
Southern Living’s Best Children’s Books of 2017!
Starred Review in PW!
Earphones Award (for audio)!
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Geisel Award Winner!
ALSC Notable!
A Banks Street Best Book!
Washington Post Best Books of 2017!
Kirkus: Best Books of 2017!
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books (2017)!
New York Public Library’s Best Books for Kids!
Evanston Public Library’s 101 Great Books for Kids (2017)!
Nerdy Book Award!
Rainbow List Nomination!
Parents Magazine’s 10 Best Books of 2017!
A Junior Library Guild Selection!
Starred Review in PW!
Starred Review in Kirkus!
Starred Review in Horn Book!
Parent’s Choice-Recommended!
ABC Best Books for Young Readers!
ILA Children’s Choices List!
NCBLA Great Reads Book List!
Golden Kite Honor!
Junior Library Guild Selection!
STARRED Review in School Library Journal!
ALSC Notable Book!
Banks Street Best Children’s Books of the Year!
ABC(ABA) Best Books for Young Readers!
NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor Book!
A Top Mighty Girl Book!
Buzzfeed’s Most Beautifully Illustrated!
An Amazon “Best Book of the Month”
2015 NERDY Book Award!
Parents’ Choice Award Silver Honor!
Georgia Picture Book Award Finalist (2016-17) !
Mississippi Magnolia Award Nomination!
Wisconsin State Reading Association’s “Picture This” List!
“Spare, poetic words sit as lightly as snowflakes.”—Wall Street Journal
“A tender, delicate recounting.”-Publishers Weekly
“Young ballet lovers will be smitten with the story.”–Kirkus Reviews
“Exquisite.”-The Horn Book Magazine
Seven Stories Up
#4 on the Winter 2013/2014 Indie Next Kids’ List!
Vermont’s Dorothy Canfield Fisher List
“Time travel is the least of the magic in the sublime Seven Stories Up, which gently and lovingly demonstrates how the right friend at the right time can heal a heart and even change a life. Like Judy Blume before her, Laurel Snyder writes characters that feel like your best friend. I wish I’d had this book when I was a kid; I would have read it a hundred times and slept with it under my pillow.” –Anne Ursu, author of The Real Boy
“Friendship, connection, and understanding are at the heart of this warm, introspective story about the events that shape a person.” –Publishers Weekly
The Longest Night
Sydney Taylor Medal!
A Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year!
STARRED Review from Publisher’s Weekly!
Tablet’s Best Jewish Children’s Books!
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Guide to Gift Books!
Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choice!
“… a captivating Passover story by Laurel Snyder (“Bigger Than a Breadbox,” “Penny Dreadful”)… centers on the themes of just rewards and just deserts. In poetic couplets, a Jewish girl narrates her experience in ancient Egypt. “In the heat and blowing sand,/Each gray dawn my work began.” A wistful, dreamy child, she’d like to fly away like a dove or be visited by the moon.” (New York Times)
Working as hard as any adult slave, this young girl expresses her bewilderment and fear as leaping frogs and itching, biting fleas disturb the masters. Fatal illness creeps in, affecting beast and man except in the Jewish homes marked with lamb’s blood. Rhyming verse carries the Passover story with a lyrical flair. “Made our way to sifting sands, / Scrambling feet, but clasping hands. / Thirsting, thrilling, full of fright— / None of us were slaves that night.” Ominously dark and murky paintings done in acrylic portray the frightened, fleeing throng finally reaching a wild, thrashing sea that is “ripped in two!” Confusion and trepidation turn to joyful surprise, as indicated by the rose-colored backdrop behind a smiling daughter and mother, thrilled to have crossed over to the open land and freedom go on. This poetic, child-oriented interpretation brings a dramatic insight and illumination to the ancient legend. A vivid and compelling introduction to the 10 plagues portion of the Seder ceremony. (author’s note, glossary) (Kirkus)
Good night, laila tov
“A wholesome and gentle story that’s pleasant and soothing for little ones of all faiths, though it will have extra resonance in Jewish households.” (Kirkus)
Bigger than a Bread Box
An ABC Best Books pick
A Bank Street Best Book for 2012
2012 SIBA Award Finalist
Great Stone Face Book Award Nominee (Children’s Librarians of New Hampshire)
Oregon Battle of the Books Nominee
Sunshine State Young Readers Award Nominee
Georgia Center for the Book: “10 Books All Young Georgians Should Read”
“Everything felt wrong, lopsided. I knew from the weird fuzzy humming inside my head,” thinks 12-year-old Rebecca Shapiro as her family ruptures before her eyes. Rebecca’s father has been out of work, and her mother is fed up; after a big fight with her husband, she packs up the children and drives from Baltimore to Atlanta to visit Rebecca and Lew’s grandmother. When Rebecca discovers this isn’t just a quick visit (her mother has a temp job for herself lined up and a new school picked out for Rebecca), she’s furious. One day while exploring her grandmother’s attic, Rebecca finds a magic breadbox that will grant any wish that fits inside it: a cookie, money, pens, lip-gloss, candy, or a diamond. But Rebecca comes to understand that the box won’t solve her problems (conversely, it creates some enormous ones); she has to do that on her own. Introspective and rich with delicate imagery, this coming-of-age tale shares themes with Snyder’s Penny Dreadful (2010). The insightful, memorable, and complex characters that Snyder creates result in a story with the same qualities. (Publishers Weekly)
“…about as miraculous an insight about divorce as anyone could hope to have.” (New York Times)
NOSH, SCHLEP, SCHLUFF
Learning—and using—Yiddish is fun for the whole family, from the youngest mamaleh to the oldest bubbe and zaideh. Introduced to America as the mother tongue of millions of Jewish immigrants, Yiddish has made its way into everyday English. The sprightly, rhyming text follows a toddler through a busy day and is peppered from beginning to end with Yiddish words. Oy!—will everybody kvell when they hear their little ones spouting words from this most expressive of languages. Here are just a few that are included in this sturdy board book: bissel—little bit; ess—eat; kibitz—joke around, chat; klutz—clumsy one; kvell—burst with pride, gush; kvetchy—dissatisfied, whiny.
Penny Dreadful
E.B. White Read-aloud Honor Book
STARRED REVIEW from Booklist
An Indienext Pick for Winter 2010
Smithsonian Notable Book for 2010
Maine Student Book Award Title
Sunshine State Young Readers Award Nominee
Bank Street CHild Study Children’s Book Award Nominee
Represented the state of Tennessee at the Nation Book Festival’s Pavilion of the States
Not dreadful at all, this very pleasant book introduces rich, lonely ten-year-old Penelope Gray, who lives in a tightly controlled and boring world. In desperation, she makes a wish for a less boring life—not knowing that wishes can come true. When her father quits his job, her desires become real, but not quite in the way she expected. This engaging twist on the “rags to riches” story follows Penelope’s family from their house in the city to an inherited home in a small town. Having changed her name to Penny, she comes to love the new house and its surrounding cottages, which are filled with a lovable and highly individualistic cast… (Kirkus)
Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher
STARRED REVIEW from Publisher’s Weekly
A Sydney Taylor Notable Book
PJ Library Selection
“Snyder (Inside the Slidy Diner) and Goldin (Go-Go-Go!) go together like matzo balls and chicken soup: the bright, daffy prose and ebulliently goofy cartoon and photo collages will persuade readers that they don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy Baxter’s spiritual journey” (Publisher’s Weekly)
Any Which Wall
A Junior Library Guild Selection!
A FL Dept of Education Literacy League Book Club Selection!
Young Hoosier Book Award Nominee (Indiana School Library Educators)
Mark Twain Award Nominee
One of GA Center for the Book’s “25 Books All Young Georgians Should Read!”
“… the fast-paced plot and glib narrator– fond of making asides– will keep readers turning pages and looking for magic in their own corners of the world.” (Kirkus)
When Susan, Roy, Henry, and Emma find a mysterious wall in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, they have absolutely no idea of the adventure that awaits them. This tribute to Edward Eager follows four kids on a magical summer journey that includes pirates, wizards, dastardly villains, and just bout everything else that Common Magic can summon up. With amazing art by LeUyen Pham
Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains
Smithsonian Notable Book for 2008
Garden State Book Award! (New Jersey Library Association)
Bookreporter Staff Pick
Until recently, Lucy (a milkmaid), and her best friend Wynston (who happens to be a prince, though that’s not really his fault) spent their days together, romping through berry patches, and teasing each other mercilessly. But now Wynston is getting older, and King Desmond insists he devote every second to the overly-complicated process of princess-finding, which is known in the Bewilderness as QUEENING.. Her feelings hurt, Lucy (by law an unsuitable match for the prince) sets out to find her long-lost mother, on the Scratchy Mountains, accompanied only by a sniffly prairie dog and an obstinate young milk cow. Together they learn about friendship, and how to bend, not break, the rules…
Inside the Slidy Diner
Step inside the Slidy Diner and meet Edie, the awful Ethelmae, the man who smells like mice, and all the other creeps at the counter. Just be sure you watch out for all the wigglepedes, and whatever you do, don’t eat the ladyfingers–they really are! With really incredible art by Jaime Zollars.
The Myth of the Simple Machines
The gorgeous simplicity of Laurel Snyder’s language makes all the possibilities–and the impossibility–of living stand out starkly…A startling and touching book. — Cole Swensen
Half/Life – Jewish Tales from Interfaith Homes
Engaging, funny and provocative…Half-Jews will see themselves and their families…and they will laugh, and maybe even cry, while reading. — Publishers Weekly
Daphne and Jim
A choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse