A BELOVED JEWISH SPIDER is making two appearances on this month’s PJ Library book selections list. Early readers in our Apples & Honey (6 Months to 2 Years) Age Group will receive Sammy Spider’s First Book of Jewish Holidays, and our Challah Toast (3 to 4 Years) Age Group will enjoy Sammy Spider’s First Yom Kippur. Both books are written by Sylvia Rouss and illustrated by Katherine Janus Kahn.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For author Sylvia Rouss, her popular venture into Jewish children’s literature is relatively young. As she explains in her website’s blogpost, “Thoughts on the Pew Report by a Jewish Children’s Author,” it wasn’t until she became a Jewish educator that she was exposed to broader world of Jewish children’s literature.
“As a young child, I was charmed by All of a Kind Family, amused by the stories of Chelm, and captivated by the Diary of Ann Frank,” she writes. “As a teenager, I was intrigued by Exodus and O Jerusalem!, and as an adult, I finally read The Mouse in the Matzah Factory.”
The more she learned about Jewish children’s literature, however, the more she grew to understand its role in helping to shape identity and Jewish community.
“The presence of quality Jewish books for parents, educators, and librarians to share with children is integral to their development of a positive Jewish identity and Jewish literacy,” Rouse writes. She later adds, “Jewish librarians, educators, authors and publishers can work together on the goal of meeting the challenge of educating and assuring the continuity of our ever diverse Jewish population.”
THE AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR TEAM
In the 2013 promotional video created by Open Road Media in 2013, Rouse adds some additional insight into why she started the Sammy Spider series.
“In the Jewish religion, we have probably a holiday every month,” she says. “I started writing because, as a teacher and in a Jewish school, I would see the holidays come and go and I would never be able to find enough books to satisfy the children in my class.”
For her part, illustrator Janus Kahn is proud of her books. “There’s a learning concept in every book,” she says in the video. “Sylvia [Rouss] has found a way to clothe it in the holiday, and then my job is just to make that more concrete, more fun, more understandable.”
Watch the Open Road Media promotional video:
AUGUST SAMMY SPIDER BOOKS
Get a closer look at August’s two Sammy Spider selections, both written by Sylvia Rouss and illustrated by Katherine Janus Kahn, by visiting their respective PJ Library website pages:
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Sammy Spider’s First Book of Jewish Holidays
Author: Sylvia A. Rouss
Illustrator: Katherine Janus Kahn
Sammy Spider is curious about everything -- especially Jewish holidays. In this story, he learns a little bit about all of them! But as his mother reminds him, spiders don’t celebrate holidays -- spiders spin webs. |
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Sammy Spider’s First Yom Kippur
Author: Sylvia Rouss
Illustrator: Katherine Janus Kahn
Sammy Spider loves watching the Shapiro family celebrate the Jewish holidays. He’s a spider, so he can’t always take part, but he always learns a lot. On Yom Kippur he learns something very important: the value of an apology. |
August 10, 2014