The Bubbe of Them All: Kar-Ben Publishing
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
Release Date: 01/02/2025
The 2026 Sydney Taylor Book Awards, Revealed!
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
The winners of the 2026 Sydney Taylor Book Awards, recognizing the best Jewish children’s and young adult literature of the year, were announced on January 26, 2026 at the American Library Association’s Youth Media Awards event. Melanie Koss is the current chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award committee, and she joined me on the podcast to discuss the 2026 winners of the award. LEARN MORE: , where you can watch a recording of the announcement 2026 Sydney Taylor Book Awards GOLD Picture Book Winner: written and illustrated by Suzy Ultman, published by Rise x Penguin...
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Announcement: Share Your Shelf
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
TRANSCRIPT: Hello! This is Heidi Rabinowitz, your host at The Book of Life Podcast, and I have some news to share. A year ago I started a for The Book of Life Podcast to celebrate the show's 20th anniversary. The free Substack posts include podcast episodes, show notes, transcripts, Jewish kidlit news, and calls to action. A number of listeners have very kindly pledged to upgrade to paid subscriptions to support the show. I am now turning on paid subscriptions, and I'm starting a new bonus segment on The Book of Life, especially for paid subscribers. It's called Share Your Shelf....
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20th Anniversary Retrospective Spectacular!
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT: It’s The Book of Life’s 20th Anniversary! In celebration, here’s a super deluxe retrospective episode, with short clips from every year of the podcast. We’ll start with this anniversary year, 2025, and then move back through time to 2005. HANUKKAH TREATS: -- print and fold! -- sales benefit the Association of Jewish Libraries LEARN MORE: Read my essay on the evolution of the show Like the clips in this special? CREDITS: Produced by at Co-sponsored by the Sister podcast: Theme...
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A Hanukkah Classic Crossover with Fuse 8 n' Kate
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
SHOW NOTES: TRANSCRIPT: Fuse 8 n’ Kate is a weekly podcast hosted by School Library Journal, in which super-librarian Betsy Bird and her sister Kate evaluate 20+ year old picture books to decide whether they should be considered classics. Since The Book of Life is 20 years old (and hopefully a classic), I asked Betsy and Kate to collaborate on a Hanukkah episode! We did a joint episode that will appear on both our feeds, interviewed each other, and talked about The Borrowed Hanukkah Latkes by Linda Glaser, illustrated by Nancy Cote, published in 1997. Did we decide it was...
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November Throwback: Jewish Book Month
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
SHOW NOTES: TRANSCRIPT: Continuing the celebration of my 20th year of podcasting, I've got another archival episode for you from 2006, about Jewish Book Month. In the early days of The Book of Life I usually had multiple guests in each episode, and this one includes four: Folklorist Howard Schwartz, talking about his picture book Before You Were Born, which had just won the Koret Award | | Buy Carolyn Starman Hessel, longtime director of the Jewish Book Council, whose nickname was "the Jewish Oprah" | Esme Raji Codell, author of one of my favorites middle-grade...
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Jean Meltzer, Queen of Jewish Joy
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
SHOW NOTES: TRANSCRIPT: Back in July 2025 I did a brief interview with Jean Meltzer, so she could tell you about Jewish Joy Con, an exciting event coming to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in March 2026. But I promised you a longer interview later - and here it is! Jean talks about her writing, her Jewish Joy Book Club and subscription box, more about the con, and about her newest book, The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah. LEARN MORE: Jean Meltzer’s , , and group on Facebook (March 13-15, 2026 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL) Jean’s own books: o o o o o ...
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October Throwback: Laurel Snyder Redux
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
SHOW NOTES: TRANSCRIPT: Continuing the celebration of my 20th year of podcasting, I've got a 2013 archival episode for you with author Laurel Snyder, who at that time was best known for her iconoclastic picture book, Baxter The Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher. Amazingly, Laurel says that The Book of Life podcast actually impacted her writing! In a she credited our first podcast conversation as a turning point in her career. She said “Heidi asked me, reasonably, what made my book Jewish, and I found I didn’t have an answer for her…. She could not possibly have...
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One Small Spark & More Than Enough
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
SHOW NOTES: TRANSCRIPT: If you're a regular Book of Life listener, you know I always ask guests for tikkun olam suggestions about ways to repair the world. Well, that's what this entire episode is about. I've got a pair of Jewish activist picture books for you: One Small Spark: A Tikkun Olam Story by Ruth Spiro, and More Than Enough: Inspired by Maimonides Golden Ladder of Giving by Richard Michelson, a story about tzedakah. These are both gorgeous picture books that convey their important messages without being preachy - absolutely worth sharing with the kids in your life...
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September Throwback: Sweep, The Story of a Girl and Her Monster
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
SHOW NOTES: TRANSCRIPT: To continue with the themes of golems and fighting for justice that we explored in our most recent episode about Kyle Lukoff's A World Worth Saving, AND in honor of my 20th year of podcasting on The Book of Life, I'm bringing you an episode from the archives. It's an interview about the middle grade historical fantasy Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier which originally aired in May, 2019, and it's also about golems, and fighting for justice. Since 2019, Author Jonathan Auxier has become a podcaster too. He and Matt Bird cohost A...
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A World Worth Saving
The Book of Life: Jewish Kidlit, Mostly
SHOW NOTES: TRANSCRIPT: A World Worth Saving by Kyle Lukoff is a queer Jewish fantasy adventure in which a trans boy and an unusual golem must save the world by Yom Kippur! I interviewed Kyle about this new middle grade novel, as well as his seasonally appropriate picture book, I'm Sorry You Got Mad, a wonderful reflection on the art of apology. Shana Tova! LEARN MORE: or A World Worth Saving or I’m Sorry You Got Mad Kyle’s recommended queer Jewish reading: by Sacha Lamb () , a podcast about Jewish demonology that Kyle used for research CREDITS: Produced...
info_outlineSHOW NOTES: https://jewishbooks.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-bubbe-of-them-all-kar-ben-publishing.html
TRANSCRIPT: https://otter.ai/u/K9B8p4G3Nr-quRj9KYrkhRaGZio?utm_source=copy_url
Appropriately, as we kick off this podcast's 20th anniversary year, in this episode we are going to think about change and continuity. We say goodbye to an old friend, Joni Sussman, who is retiring after twenty years of leading the Jewish children's publishing company Kar-Ben. And we'll say hello to a new friend, Fran Greenman-Schmitz, who will be taking up the reins at Kar-Ben.
I've been in this business a long time, so I remember when Joni started at Kar-Ben! This is her fourth live conference interview on the show, and of course it's Fran's first. Joni is the winner of the Sydney Taylor Body of Work Award, for her many contributions to the field of Jewish kidlit.
To give you some context, the oldest publisher of Jewish books in English is the Jewish Publication Society, founded in 1888, but Kar-Ben is the oldest publisher to exclusively focus on Jewish children's books. It was founded fifty years ago, in 1974 - so happy anniversary to Kar-Ben! Now there are half a dozen presses that exclusively publish Jewish children's books, but Kar-Ben is the Bubbe of them all.
I spoke with Joni and Fran at the 2024 Association of Jewish Libraries conference to hear all about this exciting time of transition.
LEARN MORE:
- Kar-Ben Publishing website
- "Kar-Ben's New Publisher Is on a Mission" Publishers Weekly 9/17/24
- Joni Sussman's past appearances on The Book of Life
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CREDITS:
- Produced by Feldman Children's Library at Congregation B'nai Israel
- Co-sponsored by the Association of Jewish Libraries
- Sister podcast: Nice Jewish Books
- Theme Music: The Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band
- Facebook Discussion Group: Jewish Kidlit Mavens
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