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Michelle Edwards
Uh oh! Babar Celebrates Christmas
Anne Frank’s soulful eyes stared straight out at me from the cover of her diary. The dust-jacket copy promised that it was a story of puberty, of adolescence and much more. Later, I looked these words up.
“Eight is too young for a book like this, choose a more appropriate book,” the temple librarian advised me. That librarian couldn’t fool me. She was trying to keep me away from the first real Jewish book I had ever seen.
Sometimes I lament the fact that most Jewish picture books seem locked into an idealized middle-class America with a bubbe who never leaves the kitchen. Too few books seem to reflect the way most American Jews live… and very few reflect contemporary issues or modern Israel.
There is always a moment, and I swear an audible sigh, when my children, collectively and individually realize that Babar, Madeline, Alfie, Annie Rose, all the American Girls, and many other of their favorite book characters celebrate Christmas. In honor of that moment, my new book (Fall ’97) is about a little girl named Meera who rides a trike, loves her blankie, and also celebrates Chanukah.
Michelle Edwards is the author/illustrator of many children’s hooks including: Eve and Smitty: An Iowa Tale, Alef-Bet and Chicken Man. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Sugar & Spice – and Beyond
The articles in this special section:Poor Marjorie Morningstar!
Fran Manushkin
Books for the 90s
Sara N.S. Meirowitz
Powerful Adolescent Girls
Naomi Danis
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Feminist (But Not Jewish)
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Finding Else Ury’s Suitcase at Auschwitz
Anne L. Fox
Israeli Bedtime Stories
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At Last, Jewish Fairy Tales
Jane Yolen
Jewish Before I Was American
Norma Simon
Deborah & Letty
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Please Write One More…
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The Book under My Pillow
Leslea Newman
Girls Who Thought about Sex
Barbara Brenner
Searching for Jewish Clues
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Jewish Rabbits
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The Impact of Reality
Yona Zeldis McDonough
God Will Have to Allow It
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Sarah Was My Soulmate
Rebecca Goldstein
Uh oh! Babar Celebrates Christmas
Michelle Edwards
Something Good from Hebrew School
Gila Gevirtz
On Yom Kippur When My Stomach Growls
Lisa Pilar Cowan
Safe in America
Paula J. Caplan
So I Had to Write it Myself
Floreva G. Cohen
They were all Orthodox
Deborah Brodie