Today it’s our privilege to shine the Mixed-Up Files spotlight on the MG Notable Book winners of the Sydney Taylor Book Award. Presented by the Association of Jewish Libraries since 1968, this prestigious award — bestowed annually and named in memory of Sydney Taylor, author of the classic All-of-a-Kind Family series — recognizes books for children and teens that exemplify high literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience.Gold medals are presented in three categories: Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult. Honor Books are awarded silver medals, and Notable Books—including the three MG titles featured below—are named in each category.
And now, without further ado…
The Sydney Taylor Book Award MG Notable Book Winners
- Max in the House of Spies: A Tale of World War II by Adam Gidwitz
- Benji Zeb Is a Ravenous Werewolf by Deke Moulton
- Things That Shimmer by Deborah Lakritz
Max in the House of Spies: A Tale of World War II by Adam Gidwitz (Dutton Children’s Books)
Max Bretzfeld doesn’t want to move from Germany to London, where he’s alone for the first time in his life. But not for long. Max is surprised to discover that he’s been joined by two unexpected traveling companions, one on each shoulder, a kobold and a dybbuk named Berg and Stein.
Germany is becoming more and more dangerous for Jewish families, but Max is determined to find a way back home–and back to his parents. He has a plan to return to Berlin. The problem is, it involves accomplishing the impossible: becoming a British spy.
Benji Zeb is a Ravenous Werewolf by Deke Moulton (Tundra Books)
Benji Zeb has a lot going on. Not only does he have a lot of studying to do—for school as well as for his upcoming bar mitzvah—he’s nervous about Mr. Rutherford, an aggressive local rancher who hates Benji’s family’s kibbutz and wolf sanctuary. Plus, Benji hasn’t figured out what to do about Caleb, Mr. Rutherford’s stepson, who’s been bullying him at school, despite Benji wanting to be friends (and maybe something more). To complicate matters, secretly, Benji and his family are werewolves who are using the wolf sanctuary as cover for their true identities.
Things come to a head when Caleb shows up at the kibbutz one night . . . in wolf form. He’s a werewolf too, unable to control his shifting, and he needs Benji’s help. Can anxious Benji juggle all of these things along with his growing feelings toward Caleb?
Things That Shimmer by Deborah Lakritz (Kar-Ben Publishing)
In the spring of 1973, Melanie Adler desperately wants to be accepted by the Shimmers, the popular kids in her class. But the secret of her mother’s PTSD stands in the way. As hard as she tries, Melanie can’t act as effortlessly confident and fun as the Shimmers. She’s convinced no one knows what it’s like to have a parent who’s afraid of everything–until Dorit Shoshani moves to town. Clever, independent Dorit understands Melanie’s home life thanks to her own family’s struggles. The girls become fast friends. But when the Shimmers finally start to pay attention to Melanie, she’s torn between her bond with Dorit and her chance at popularity.
And now, a Q and A with the Notable Winners!
ADAM GIDWITZ
MR: I won’t embarrass you by listing your numerous book-related awards and accolades (who can count that high? 😀), but having Max in the House of Spies chosen as a Sydney Taylor Award Notable book must be particularly meaningful for you as a Jewish author, telling Jewish stories.
AG: It is. Most anyone who writes from the perspective of a certain cultural group struggles with a certain ambivalence: we want to do something new, something daring; and yet we also want acceptance from our group. With Max in the House of Spies, and perhaps even more with the conclusion of the duology, Max in the Land of Lies, I am taking certain risks—talking honestly about antisemitism in England and Germany, but also complicating every character, the good guys and the bad guys alike—all while telling a rip-roaring spy story. To have the committee recognize the quality of what I’m trying to do is very gratifying indeed.
MR: Max in the House of Spies is the first book in a duology, and it’s your first work of historical fiction, set during World War II. What prompted your decision to focus on this time period? Also, without giving away any spoilers, what will Max be up to in book #2?
AG: A close family friend, the late music critic Michael Steinberg, was on the Kindertransport as a boy. His story fascinated me, and I have long wanted to explore the story of the Kindertransport. When COVID hit, and it felt like we were living in a wilderness of lies, fervently defended by the people in power and millions of average Americans, I wanted to explore how a nation could commit itself to lies. It felt like the perfect opportunity to return to Michael’s story. So in the first book, Max is in England, trying to be trained as a spy so he can go back to Germany to look for his parents. In the second volume, he’s back, and while he’s on his mission he is also learning: why? Why are you Nazis? Why do you hate me? (Or would you, if you knew who I really was?). It’s both a spy novel and a novel of ideas—or of questions.
MR: And finally, Adam, what are you working on now?
AG: I’m spending a lot of time sharing Max in the Land of Lies with the world right now. But my next book will be a graphic novel adaptation of some of the scary, funny fairy tales I tell on my podcast, Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest. Look for that in 2027.
DEKE MOULTON
MR: This is not your first Sydney Taylor Book Award: Don’t Want to Be Your Monster won the Honor category last year. How does it feel to be a two-time winner?
DM: It’s definitely surreal! I think as any author knows, the ‘second book syndrome’ fears are so real—even as I was writing Benji Zeb, I worried that it wasn’t going to be successful, that I wouldn’t be able to capture the same kind of magic, that everything good I had writing-wise was spent in my first book. So it’s a weird headspace to be in to see that second book doing well, and in ways that Don’t Want To Be Your Monster didn’t. Benji’s also got a running in the Cybils Awards and the inaugural Pedro and Daniel Intersectionality Award. It’s ‘validating’ as the kids say.
As a Jewish author, I think it’s even more humbling. I feel like there’s only certain Jewish stories that break out of our group—sadly, it seems like non-Jewish readers are mostly interested in Holocaust books or books where our Jewishness is less observed. So to have Benji Zeb – about a Modern Orthodox boy who is struggling with anxiety and queerness – get this kind of recognition. . . humbling doesn’t begin to explain how I feel. It’s empowering to know our stories, Jewish stories, is being received out in the world.
Getting a notable award from the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee felt so validating as well. In Don’t Want To Be Your Monster, I had queer characters, but they weren’t my main two, one of which is a Jewish character. For Benji Zeb, I sometimes worried that there was going to be something that wasn’t going to land right. I’m religious, and queer, and those are two identities that are often in great conflict—to put that into a book and put that out into the world, you never know how it’s going to be received. Well, I suppose now I know!! It’s just . . . it fills me up with a lot of warmth and contentment. Knowing that I took a huge risk, really put a lot of vulnerability in my words, and it landed. It was received. It’s hard to explain how much that means to me.
MR: The Sydney Taylor Book Award is named after Sydney Taylor, the beloved children’s author of the All-of-a-Kind Family series. If you read the series as a child, do you remember your reaction to the books, and to Taylor’s beautifully rendered characters?
DM: I actually didn’t read the books as a child! When I was growing up I hated ‘slice-of-life’ contemporary books (which is ironic because I feel like the older I get, the more I appreciate those). I’ve read the All-of-a-Kind Family books as an adult and adore them—but as a kid, all I wanted to read was fantasy. When I first started to write, I didn’t make any of my characters overtly Jewish because I just didn’t see any Jewish characters in fantasy or adventure books. I just didn’t think that’s where we belonged—Jewish characters only belonged in the ‘real world’ of contemporary/historical fiction. It wasn’t until I read Sofiya Pasternack’s Anya and the Dragon that I realized, ‘Wow, there can be a fantasy book with dragons in it, where the main character didn’t have to be Jewish, and that character can still be Jewish just because.’ It blew my mind. I wrote Don’t Want To Be Your Monster like, two months after reading it.
MR: Both of your MG novels feature fantastical characters, like vampires and werewolves, along with a hearty dose of Jewish folklore. What is it about the supernatural that excites you as a writer? And Jewish folklore?
DM: I love the openness to explore what you can do with those kinds of creatures. For a ‘realistic book with humans’ you really are limited, but once you start to play with creatures like vampires or werewolves or X-Men mutants or whatever –you get to have fun with who your characters are. Like, my vampires, I had all the old tropes and ‘rules’ and got to play with which ones I wanted to use (like getting burned in the sunlight) and which ones I wanted to explore more (like why vampires drink blood). It’s just really fun.
I loved being able to meld two passions: Jewish folklore and the more mainstream horror creatures with Benji Zeb. I honestly had no idea that we even had our own werewolf myth until I started researching for this book—a friend suggested I look into Jewish werewolf mythology, and I was like, “Huh, why didn’t that even occur to me?” Even with the excitement to write Jewish characters, even with the ability and the encouragement of my publishing team—I still have work to do, unpacking my own upbringing that tells me we aren’t there.
MR: What’s next on the writing horizon for you, Deke?
DM: So much!! I have a short story out now in the anthology S’more Spooky Stories with Owl Hollow Press. It’s an anthology of spooky stories that all take place in different National Parks and the proceeds go to the National Park Foundation. So, I’m really happy that that’s in the works.
I’ve got something out on submission, and a proposal out, and books with my agent. So who knows what will be out next, or what will be picked up or not. That’s the strange fun of publishing—it’s a mystery until it’s out on paper!
(For more on Deke Moulton, check out this interview from the Mixed-Up Files archives.)
DEBORAH LAKRITZ
MR: Although this is not your first book to win a prestigious award—your picture book Say Hello, Lily was a PJ Library selection—I’m guessing that having Things That Shimmer chosen as a Sydney Taylor Award Notable book is particularly meaningful for you as a Jewish author, telling Jewish stories. Can you elaborate?
DL: Yes, having Things That Shimmer chosen as a Sydney Taylor Notable book is a tremendous honor! First, it is a story that is emotionally very true and that includes some of the most resonant experiences I had growing up: coming of age in a family that had experienced a serious trauma, navigating a highly charged and socially stratified middle school, and learning what true friendship actually means. One of the things I’m most proud of about is that Things That Shimmer is a very Jewish story that has deep universal themes about friendship and identity, but the Jewish aspect is “normalized.” No one is struggling about being Jewish, no one is experiencing isolation, discrimination, or antisemitism. It’s just a story that has very Jewish elements (the Yom Kippur War, Jewish/Israeli central characters, scenes at synagogue on High Holidays, a friend’s bat mitzvah), that all enhance the story and make it uniquely Jewish, but don’t necessarily define the story.
MR: Rumor has it that All-of-a-Kind Family was your favorite book series as a child. What was it about the series that resonated with you so deeply?
DL: Although I couldn’t have put it into words at the time, the All-of-a-Kind series allowed me to see myself, or at least something very familiar to me, that I wasn’t seeing in other books. Up until that point, any Jewish books I had read were didactic, usually about a holiday, and didn’t invite me to turn the page to see “what happens next.” With Sydney Taylor’s books I was invested in the characters and their personalities, their desires, their dreams, and their conflicts. And of course, there are all of the sensory details that just live on in my imagination: sneaking ginger snap crackers and chocolate babies in bed, sucking on a scrap of salty lox or tasting a paper cone filled with steaming chickpeas from street vendors, discovering hidden buttons while helping Mama dust the furniture. So many wonderful details! Also, it has been thrilling to learn how any of my fellow Jewish kidlit colleagues were similarly smitten by these books!
MR: Although you’re not a kidlit newbie—you’ve written several picture books—Things That Shimmer is your first MG novel. What prompted your decision to write for a middle-grade audience? Also, did you encounter any particular challenges along the way?
DL: It’s funny, I had the idea for Things That Shimmer from the moment I walked into my first class on writing for children back in the mid-1990’s. At that point I was raising a brood of children and the idea of committing myself to writing seriously for publication was out of reach. Thankfully, my wonderful teacher, Gretchen Mayo, who was a local author, didn’t let me talk myself out of keeping my dream alive. She encouraged me to keep reading award-winning, acclaimed children’s books, and to write whenever I could. I decided that writing picture books was probably a more realistic goal at that point, and it was in that class that I first drafted Say Hello, Lily. I’ve studied the craft of picture book writing and I can honestly say I find it much more challenging than writing novels for kids. The toughest part about it is just keeping at it and believing that you’ll get to the end. And then, of course, you’ll probably start all over and revise it and rewrite pages and pages of it. Some people are just quicker, but I can’t rush the process!
MR: What are you working on now, Deborah?
DL: Well, I’m querying a Jewish young adult novel right now (my wonderful agent, Susan Cohen of Writers House retired), as well as working on several Jewish-themed picture books. I’m itching to write another middle-grade novel, and I even have a basic outline of it in my head, so that may be happening sooner than later!
CONGRATULATIONS TO ADAM GIDWITZ, DEKE MOULTON, AND DEBORAH LAKRITZ… THE MG NOTABLE BOOK WINNERS!
Bonus!
For lovers of Sydney Taylor’s beloved All-of-a-Kind Family series, check out The All-of-a-Kind Family Companion, which includes a host of thought-provoking discussion questions, produced by the Association of Jewish Libraries in celebration of the one hundredth birthday of author Sydney Taylor, born October 30, 1904.
