FAMILY ENGAGEMENT IS A BIG PART of the mission of PJ Library. We send award-winning books to families raising Jewish children with the hope that parents will read aloud to their children, exposing them not only to literature and language, but also the timeless core values of Judaism.
Because of the engagement piece in our mission, it was especially rewarding to read in the New Haven Register recently about the Trachten family -- a PJ family that receives its books via Center for Life and Learning at the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven.
GROWING UP ON PJ
In New Haven Register’s account of the Trachten family, writer Jim Shelton tells us that 5-and-a-half-year-old Anya has been receiving and reading PJ Library books since she was 6 months old. “We’re reading these on a daily basis,” says mother Jessica Trachten. “We have story time every night.”
The family has also become active at the JCC of Greater New Haven, participating book-related activities. For example, Saskia Swenson Moss, coordinator of youth and family education at the Center for Life and Learning at the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, encourages enrolled members of PJ Library New Haven to attend a weekly “Shabbat Friends” event centered on PJ books.
“These books generate questions, help create rituals you can do with your family in a wonderful, gentle way, and provide an understanding of the whole range of Judaism,” Moss says in the article.
FAMILIES IN THE SPOTLIGHT
PJ Library was fortunate to have PJ families spotlighted in several Rosh Hashanah-themed news stories around the country this year. The Trachten family feature was especially nice because it included professional photography, and even a video.
Do you have a PJ family feature to share? Send it to outreach@pjlibrary.org.
In the New Have Register video, below, Evan Trachten reads Nosh, Schlep, Schluff: BabYiddish
by Laurel Snyde aloud to his daughter Anya.
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October 5, 2011