This was especially troubling in light of a comment one of my (non-Jewish) Scouts had made when I brought my Menorah to a meeting so we could light it during Hanukah. “Looking at that makes me so sad,” she said. “Because it reminds me of Anne Frank.” I loved the diary of Anne Frank, and think there are things we all need to remember … but I began to worry that we were teaching Jews and non-Jewish children alike that this was the total sum of Jewish experience–when my own Jewish experience isn’t just or even mostly about death and our grim obligation to remember it, but about so much of joy and life and light. Most Jews I know, at least from my generation onwards, would say the same. Why aren’t we showing all that more in our Jewish fiction? Snyder found more of a range than I did at that book fair when she looked, but she noticed something else just as problematic: Most books for young Jewish readers are instructional. They have titles like, Purim Goodies or It’s Israel’s Birthday! and they’re intended to educate kids about specific customs, traditions, events, and places. The children’s book writing community does struggle with the societal notion that every book for a child has to be overtly good for them, and with conveying that kids have the right to books that are just for fun, too. But I’m beginning to wonder if in the Jewish community and those of us who are Jewish writers have been less successful in making edutainment books just one part of what’s out there. Snyder says that after thinking about these issues for a while, I began work on a picture book called Baxter the Kosher Pig, about how insecurity and misunderstanding once kept a little pig from finding his community. The book came out in a rush, and thrilled with the results, I quickly sent it off to an esteemed publisher of Jewish children’s books. Almost overnight I received a rejection, a kind note explaining that while the press liked my voice, and the story, and while they thought Baxter was cute and funny, the idea of a pig wanting to be kosher was too risky. They said they could not afford to “alienate their readers.” Could Baxter be something besides a pig, they wondered. No, he couldn’t. That was the point of the story. I’ve met the “risky” problem, too–that book fair above told me not to come at first, because I “wrote supernatural books” and that “might offend the rabbis.” My own rabbi at the time was indignant, fortunately (“Offend what rabbis?” he demanded), and I got a phone call inviting me after all the day after I told him about that. But I suspect there’s a whole community of folks like the organizer of that book fair, afraid of making waves, of moving beyond boundaries that don’t even look like boundaries outside of the community. When I published a story in an anthology of ghost stories from a Jewish press, the reviews–and the book’s marketing–made this out to be a radical and edgy sort of thing to do, publishing Jewish ghost stories. That confused me at the time–ghost stories are not exactly new. I think I understand what’s going on a little more now. Fortunately Snyder was able to publish Baxter the Kosher Pig, by going to a secular press instead. And what Jewish kid wouldn’t want to read that? If I were six, that would beat out yet another “let’s learn all about Hanukah!” book any time. And I’d learn just as much in the end.
Anyway, good things to think about in that article–including what those of us who are Jewish writers can do to convey the range of our contemporary experiences in our stories, outside of writing books designed to teach lessons about same.
(Also, I have to say. Baxter the Kosher Pig? One of the best titles for a picture book ever, at least as far as this Jewish once-kid is concerned.)