My First Review

OK, I have to admit, it's a bit biased...

For my first official post, I'm actually not putting up my own writing, but rather an excerpt from a letter my husband wrote to a friend a while back (with his permission, of course!). I love what he had to say and wanted to share. I will post my own version sometime soon.

Dori decided to write a book. She had been looking for Jewish books for kids around our kids’ ages (2nd and 5th grades). Other than books about the Holocaust or books about famous Jewish athletes, she really could not find anything between books for preschool kids and ones for high school kids. And certainly nothing that was just a really good chapter book that kids would eat up irrespective of it being a Jewish book. She got to planning, and came up with the model of doing a book series; twelve books, taking place over the course of a year, hitting on holidays and other life cycle events. My most useful suggestion was to take things one step further. Have the characters in each book learn about and struggle with a core value or two about/from Judaism. After some discussion, Dori decided to try to tackle this concept and see if she could weave it into her book outlining and writing.

It has been a long process. She would write, and then sit with our kids to get their reactions and feedback. Although I was part of conversations over many dinners discussing the book and knew the basic plot, I decided to wait to until a first draft was completed before reading it. That was just before Passover, 2006. The book was great.

She had a focus group or two of kid-readers, had some friends read it, and got lots of feedback. Then she took a very long vacation. Sometime after the chaggim (High Holidays) she got to work on revising, and towards the end of 2006 she finished up the second draft. Again, I waited until the draft was completed to read it, and was even more blown away. Not only is it well written, captivating, warm, fun and funny, as a rabbi friend told her over dinner a few months ago, the book will be published because it needs to be published. The story – no, not the story, the wisdom, growth and insights it offers – is absent from the literary landscape and is desperately needed in the homes of so many Jewish families and schools.

Without giving away too much, it is centered on some kids who have all of the activities, issues, etc. of everyday middle class American kids. They are Jewish, go to afternoon Hebrew school, but live in the “real world”. The plot struggle relates to the main character being invited by her best friend (not Jewish) to go to a new water park on Rosh Hashanah. Dori has managed to address not only that very ordinary tension for a ten year old, but to do it in a way that intertwines it with t’shuvah concepts that are within the experience and comprehension levels of elementary-aged kids.