The Mean Scene

by Rachel Blustain

Is the "mean girls" brouhaha a backlash against feminism? A look at why the girl-blaming is happening now and why Jewish girls may be especially implicated. Plus…how summer camp can hurt or help.

• How One Jewish Camp Helps by Orli Cotel

Set to Rise

by Lisa Beatman

A floury memoir 

The Stay-at-Work Mom

by C. Devora Hammer

True confessions from an executive woman who sets the bar very high, finds her husband can’t scale it, and makes other arrangements.

Prayer

These are unexpected takes on life’s sacred moments, solitary and surprising.

• Bound for Glory: Females in Phylacteries by Ruth Horowitz
• A Quiet Ritual for Burying the Baby's Placenta by Catherine Grossman
• Nursing in Shul by Aurora Mendelsohn

How Books Tell the World’s Bad News to Children

One year after 9/11 and two years into the Intifada, Jane Yolen, Lemony Snicket's editor, Julius Lester, Leslea Newman and a host of other children’s book authors and experts reveal how they frame reality—and fantasy—for kids now.

• Beware Sentimental Tripe by Jane Yolen
• Truth Soothes by Susan Rich
• Heroines Overcome their Demons by Gail Carson Levine
• Children: Stronger Than We Think by Shira Geffen
• Bad News from the Start by Ellen Handler Spitz
• Every Child Imagines Orphanhood by Gail Hareven
• Kaddish as Magical Incantation by Susie Morgenstern
• Cry for Someone Else by Esther Rudomin Hautzig
• History Helps by Karen B.Winnick
• Struggles of Underdogs by Sonya Sones
• Transmitting Determination by Dorit Orgad
• No Brainwashing by Yehudit Kafri
• Hope After the Holocaust by Ruth Minsky Sender
• Pain Is a Teacher by Julius Lester
• Forget Bibliotherapy by Johanna Hurwitz
• War in a Picture Book? by Fran Manushkin
• Discovering Hatred by Leslea Newman
• Don't Plant Seeds of Despair by Sami Michael
• Between Hopes and Reality by Etgar Keret
• The Power of Anger by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso