On May 7, Kathe Pinchuck, Outgoing Chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee posted in the AJL Blog, People of the Books, a list of Sydney Taylor Book Awards winners, celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month.
I urge you to look over this list and see how many of these wonderful books you’ve read.
I have to admit, there are many books I haven’t (yet) read. But, I’m willing to put myself out there and say these are my favorites (so far) from Kathe’s compilation:
- Winter, Jonah. You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax? Illustrated by Andre Carrilho. (Schwartz & Wade, 2009)
- Levitin, Sonia. Silver Days. (Atheneum, 1989)
- Polacco, Patricia. The Keeping Quilt. (Simon & Schuster, 1988)
And I’d like to add this Sydney Taylor winner to my list of favorites:
Oberman, Sheldon. The Always Prayer Shawl. Illustrated by Ted Lewin. (Boyds Mills Press, paperback, 2005)
Today I commit myself to reading as many of the Sydney Taylor Book Award winners as I can.
Question for you:
Which from Kathe’s list are your favorites and why? Do you have other Sydney Taylor winners as your favorites?
The Whole Megillah 
Out of everything on this year’s list, my son keeps going back to “So Punk Rock (And Other Ways to Disappoint Your Mother). It’s one of the only recent examples I can think of that is a contemporary story about Jewish teens from a boy’s point of view – where else can you find a mash-up of teens, an outrageous cover of Hava Nagila and a bouncer who can argue about Maimonedes and Spinoza?