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The Book of Life is an interview-format podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly, with occasional coverage of YA/adult books, music, film and web,  established in December 2005. Host Heidi Rabinowitz is a Judaica librarian at Congregation B'nai Israel of Boca Raton, FL, and the podcast reveals the backstory of materials that might be found in a synagogue library like Heidi's. As director of the Feldman Children's Library at B'nai Israel, Heidi focuses on material aimed at youth, but the podcast does cover a range of subject matter for all ages. If you are a creator of Jewish books, music, film, or web content, please see our submission guidelines.

Dec 16, 2018

Hillary Saxton is a children's librarian at the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Public Library, and the creator of the event series "Stand Up! Storytime for Social Justice." She was originally scheduled to participate in the "Social Justice and Jewish Children's Books" panel at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference,...


Dec 1, 2018

Remember All-of-a-Kind Family? It's the classic chapter book by Sydney Taylor, of five sisters living on the Lower East Side in the early 20th century. Now Emily Jenkins and Paul O. Zelinsky have created an original picture book based on those same characters, All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah. Illustrator...


Nov 6, 2018

Jane Breskin Zalben is an artist/illustrator and the author of over 50 books for children. Her recent picture book, A Moon for Moe and Mo, was featured in the Missing Voice picture book discussion group on Facebook in September 2018. The Missing Voice group was created by another author, Lisa Rose, to bring books...


Oct 14, 2018

At the 2018 Association of Jewish Libraries conference, I bumped into author Jacqueline Jules. She's been on the podcast before in 2014 to talk about Never Say a Mean Word Again. Her new picture book is Light the Menorah: A Hanukkah Handbook, which offers meditations for candle lighting. We grabbed a quick interview...


Oct 14, 2018


The Girl with the Red Balloon is a magical time travel, historical fiction, kind-of-sort-of Holocaust book that won a Sydney Taylor Honor in the Teen Readers Category for 2018. I met the author, Katherine Locke, at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference in Boston, where we snuck into a side room to talk –...