Blog Home

Growing up, being Jewish meant simply saying I was Jewish. But somewhere along the line, I started feeling Jewish. And that somewhere was in the historic Plum Street Temple, one of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise’s dreams come true.    

MTV debuted its reality series “The Real World” in 1992. Young adult strangers lived together in an apartment and were followed by cameras to capture what drama might ensue. In one of the first episodes, a young man asked his roommates to do him

The folks at Kar-Ben asked if I’d be willing to write a blog about my new book, A Book About Bupkes. (*Nothing.) I gladly agreed. Let me say that I think the book is lots of fun, with an essential message about the small acts of kindness that

Sometimes the push of family history is an author’s greatest writing prompt. While I am not directly related to Luis de Torres, my paternal family lore connects me to him and encouraged me to write Luis de Torres Sails to Freedom.    

In my experience the hardest part of writing a story isn’t the actual writing of it—finding all the right words—but finding the right shape for it: the right beginning, the right middle, and the right end. For this hardest part I’m usually not

Children have a natural fondness for animals. The simple sight of a waddling duck at a pond can elicit hand-clapping glee in a preschooler. Puppies are much more than pets, they are treasured childhood friends. Children find comfort in loving

I began writing Not So Shy in the midst of a bad flu about a decade ago. Blurred thoughts caused by a high fever threw me back in time to the day we left Israel a few years earlier. My twelve-year-old daughter Shai (yes, I stole her name for

When we sat down to write our first Hanukkah picture book, we began with a question: How would you feel if you were a dreidel who always got passed over during the holiday fun?  Tizzy —a hopeful but balance-impaired dreidel—anticipates

I love to wear my grandmother’s bangle because it identifies me as Iraqi. People stop me to ask, “Are you Iraqi? My mother, my grandmother had a bangle exactly like that.” And they join me in remembering where we come from.   I always

As the author of over fifty children’s books, I have written about the US Constitution, a gigantic mythical bird, Pluto’s demotion, Rabbi Akiva, goblins, a boy with magic sneakers, and an eclectic mix of other topics. But until My Name is