Clik here to view.
what’s new, pussycat
I did not love the Superheroes in Gotham exhibit at the New-York Historical Society. I liked it. It was cute. It could have been so much more. I do, however, love the manly facial pelt of Aaron...
View ArticleClik here to view.
byline alerts!
Why I curse in front of my children (with bonus multiple examples of awesome Yiddish curses)! The history of Kossar’s Bialys and the Jewish Lower East Side bagel and bialy union wars! I have crazed,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
random unrelated byline mega-roundup
I got a matzoh manicure for Passover, in tribute to my neighborhood’s dearly departed Streit’s factory. Let’s think very hard about censoring children’s books, m’kay? Hello, condescending male rabbi...
View ArticleClik here to view.
today in unsound pedagogy
Why a Holocaust app for kids is not a great idea: The father says goodbye, smiling and waving, and promises that tomorrow they will be together again. (Poke the screen, and make barbed wire appear,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
busy busy busy
Look! My bright shiny web site, by chill genius Jack Taylor, for my forthcoming book, Mamaleh Knows Best. I wrote a big fat roundup of summer young adult novels for the New York Times Book review, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
the 50th anniversary of Valley of the Dolls
I loved researching this piece on Jacqueline Susann’s life and work. (Factoid that did not make it into the story: Susann’s husband Irving Mansfield had her cremated — not very Jewish, but Susann had...
View Articleit’s too hot to go outside; let’s stay glued to the computer
Someone emailed me that my FORTHCOMING BUT IF YOU’VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH ME TALKING ABOUT IT MAYBE AVOID ME FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS BOOK Mamaleh Knows Best is #1 on Amazon in New Releases in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
happy new year
Shana tova, for those who swing that way! So what’s news? There is a new children’s book called Shmelf the Hanukkah Elf. I hated it like an eggnog latte. I was a guest on the Unorthodox podcast,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
link roundup!
Using a bunch of new children’s books to explain the refugee crisis to kids (I have gotten hate mail and nasty social media comments from the left AND the right — both sides think I am a patsy and a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
what i have been up to lately
This photo is my mantra right now. In work news: For the New York Times, I reviewed an academic book about the history of the menorah (and learned two new words, aniconism and pseudepigraphic). For...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Best Jewish Children’s (and YA) Books of 2016
Ta da! My annual list. SO MUCH LOVE FOR THESE BOOKS. Buy them! Read them! Also for Tablet, a look at a new Jewish literary journal and a visit with The Schlep Sisters, purveyors of sexy funny Jewy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
bylines, bylines, bylines
I have a piece in Real Simple about my insouciant, devil-may-care inability to finish projects I start, a trait that delights all those around me. A life coach, a psychiatrist and a personal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
even non-political articles wind up being political right now
Except for this unhinged rant about Peeps Oreos. No politics, just venom. Explicitly political: Here are some awesome rabbis, of varying denominations and backgrounds and genders, fighting for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘sup?
Look, an interesting new graphic biography of Mamas and the Papas singer Cass Elliot! In other things-I-wrote news, I enjoyed a genre-smashing lesbian time-travel romance and a queer cabaret about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wolfie Cohen and more…
I wrote this piece on the late, lamented Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House on an iPad, in the car, on the way from Orlando to St. Petersburg on vacay with the fam. I nearly barfed. But not because I was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
what’s been going on here
I realize I haven’t posted in a while. My beloved kitty Bookie died. He was a miracle kitty — had a heart defect, battled back from a pulmonary embolism that paralyzed his back legs, put up with us...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book rec! and other stuff!
This new picture book about a boy and a stone lion is very touching…and a good way to open a discussion about immigration with one’s children. If you are in downtown NYC, check out this ship-focused...
View ArticleClik here to view.
new kitten!
Please welcome Dorothy Parker Kaylee Velvet McGonagall, seen here in the company of Novella Zoe McGonagall. In byline news: Meet Kay Thompson, who wrote Eloise and starred in Funny Face, and was a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New children’s books about refugees
In Tablet Magazine today. It hasn’t even been a year since my last roundup on this subject, but there are several new and notable titles, and it’s not as if the issue is going away. I went to Berlin...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Letting bylines be bylines
Rosh HaShanah is nearly upon us. Honey cake sucks. Can we science the shit out of it? (The recipe’s by America’s Test Kitchen; the admittedly-delicious-looking cake pic above is by Joe Keller.)...
View Article