New Children's Books from Kar-Ben Publishing | Spring 2023 Preview

Join us to learn about our forthcoming children's books from Lerner Publishing Group!

My Family Haggadah
A colorful board book haggadah for the youngest seder-goer highlighting the main parts of the ceremonial meal. A Page Plus QR code in the book links to Songs for a Family Seder.


Mazal Bueno!
Parents celebrate baby’s first grin to baby’s first word, and all the milestones in between in this book featuring Ladino words, the language of the Sephardic Jewish community. Mazal bueno! Go, baby go!


Moses and the Runaway Lamb
A young lamb wanders away from the flock, but Moses the shepherd brings her back to safety. On that day, God sees that Moses is the right person to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.


Debbie's Song
Debbie Friedman always had music inside of her, and she had a dream. She thought music could heal the world and bring people closer. She did something radical and new—created Jewish music that brings the whole Jewish community together.


Luis de Torres Sails to Freedom
Luis de Torres is a secret Jew. When the Inquisition comes, Luis joins a sailing expedition to explore new worlds with only his faith, his wits, and a silver hamsa for protection. Could it be that Jewish tradition helped protect the ship?


The Rabbi and His Donkey
Hamor the donkey is proud to take Rabbi Moses Maimonides to the sultan’s palace every day—until he is replaced by a faster horse. But Rabbi and donkey are soon reunited, as each learns a lesson from the other.


The Blue Glass Heart
When Sarah accidentally breaks Bubbe’s blue glass bowl, she sets a heart-shaped piece of blue glass on an adventure, touching the lives of children around the world, until it finally—remarkably—finds its way back home.


The Babka Sisters
Dueling baker sisters Esther and Hester meet their new neighbor Sylvester, who gladly becomes their babka tester, determining which shvester’s (sister’s) Babka is the best. With cat Lester and dog Chester, the new friends enjoy a delicious Shabbat. But whose Babka is the best?


Not So Shy
Twelve-year-old Shai hates having to move to America. She's determined to find a way to get back home to Israel—until she starts opening up to new experiences and friendships.


Nothing Could Stop Her: The Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber
Ruth Gruber, a Jewish American born in 1911, was drawn to adventure and driven to fight injustice. Her career as a renowned journalist spanned seven decades, reporting on places like Nazi Germany and remote Arctic regions of the Soviet Union.


Pirate Passover
The pirates are getting ready for Passover, until their ship is washed ashore in a storm! What will they do? Luckily, they find a house with an open door, and everyone is invited in to enjoy the seder.


Thank you for listening!

Music credits
"Farm" Kevin Mac

Transcript

0:05

thank you so carbon has a really fun charming and interesting spring season we start out with two board books the first is called my family hagata this is a companion book to our family haggada too which is our popular hagata for all families that book also has a large print edition and this my family hagada is going to be for our our littlest Tiny Tots um it has a QR code linking to songs for a family seder the artwork is adorable this is just adorable next this is muzzle Bueno this is the second book by um author and singer Sarah arroweste who comes from a Sephardic family and is interested in ladino this book teaches ladino Words which is the spartic language of the Jews it's a Charming book muzzle Bueno means in their this case go baby goes so these are baby milestones and the parents are celebrating by T using ladino words to celebrate these different milestones in the baby's life there's a wonderful Page Plus QR code to Sarah doing a song and it is it's really just wonderful next uh we here we have Moses and the runaway Lamb by Jacqueline Jules who has done a number of books for us this is a very sweet Bible story Moses has a flock of lambs the a little one runs away Moses tries to decide whether it's worth running after this land which is really a lot of trouble or just let it go because he's got a lot of lambs he decides to go after the baby lamb and saves it and brings it back to the flock unaware that God has been watching and sees that Moses is going to become a good leader of the Jewish people because he cares about everyone even the weak next Debbie's song this is the first of two um picture book biographies in our season this is about Debbie Friedman who really revolutionized the um Jewish songs uh she used to go to the synagogue as I did as a kid and there was a Cantor up there singing in Hebrew uh people were falling asleep during Services Debbie figured this was not the way the Jewish World ought to be operating in modern times and she took her guitar she is a self-taught guitarist does not read music and she started to compose songs that included both Hebrew and English these songs became very popular she um was a at summer camp she was a song leader at summer camp and eventually she becomes famous and plays at Carnegie Hall and they have now named the reform rabbinical Society cantorial school after her which is a big deal she was a woman who sang liturgy and that was an enormous thing and Debbie Friedman is actually from Saint Paul I knew her as kid this is a really beautiful book it has photographs that were submitted by the family so we can see photos of her as a kid it is a really lovely book and I think it will do well next Louis D Torres was a young man during the Spanish Inquisition he was a convert to Catholicism also considered a secret Jew so he converted but kept his Jewish identity and when the Inquisition really comes down on the Jewish people this was 1492 a year you may recognize he decides that he's going to join a group of ships that are sailing for the new world and he will seek his fortune before he leaves home his nephew gives him a silver hamsa a little like an amulet that he takes with him for good luck as it turns out the commander whose ship he is on is Christopher Columbus because Columbus is kind of persona non grata these days we only mention that in the back matter we call him the Commander in the in the story itself but the ships are getting ready to sail the Nina the Pinta the Santa Maria they are ready to go but it turns out the day they were planning to sail was Tisha of which is the most the saddest Jewish holiday of the year it is a fast day and it is bad luck to begin an adventure like this on Tisha of so tutorials goes to Columbus to the commander and says you know this is really bad luck we shouldn't be sailing on this day Columbus pupus it but then he sees that there is a storm kind of coming up and he decides to delay the sailing of the ship this is based on a true story the back matter talks about the speculation over all these years that there was some that tush above may have been the reason why the ships were delayed sailing there were in fact three Jewish Sailors on Columbus's ships um and there's some interesting back matter about that so this is a very cool and interesting history you know this was a real guy next the rabbi and his donkey this is a very Charming book which turned out to have much more gorgeous illustrations than I realized it was going to have they looked like a fairy tale but this is a story about Rabbi maimonides who was a very famous Jewish philosopher and scholar and the story here is that Rabbi maimonides had a donkey and the donkey would take him to the Sultan's Palace where he would consult with the sultan he was maimonides was a physician to the court and he would plot on the donkey and as they walked along he would talk to the donkey and the donkey would listen well one day the sultan sends a beautiful Steed to maimonides and says you know maimonides you shouldn't be wasting time right little donkey I'm going to give you this beautiful horse to ride and it'll give you a lot more time to do important things so the donkey hamor is very sad about this he misses being maimonides Mount and maimonides takes the horse and he rides back and forth but in the end he realizes that that the horse is so Speedy that maimonies doesn't have any time to think or to formulate his thoughts so in the end he goes back to riding the donkey so that he can sort of make his ideas known to the donkey and process what he is thinking before writing his books um this book also includes a number of maimonides famous ideas and philosophies this is a Charming book that will introduce kids to maimonides who was a famous Jewish philosopher next uh this next one is the blue glass heart by Yona McDonald this is a beautiful story about a family heirloom uh Sarah a little girl is fooling around in the house and she breaks her Bubbies her grandmother's beautiful blue glass vase she's very upset by this but the grandma says don't worry you're much more important than the vase nevertheless Sarah's very upset and as she's sweeping up she finds a heart-shaped piece of glass left from the vase she sticks it in her pocket but when she goes to the beach the next day she loses it and this starts a journey of the blue glass heart all around the world it goes on the ocean it's picked up by a bird it goes to different countries all around the world touching the lives of various Jewish kids in different places until finally and remarkably it finds its way home we know that the people in the story don't know that but it is really beautiful Sierra fideli is the um is the illustrator she's done a number of books for us it's really a beautiful book next the babka sisters this is pretty hilarious this is a story by Leslie Ann Newman who is very very well known and prolific in the Jewish World this is the story about two sisters Esther and Hester and their pets Chester and Lester and they're across the street neighbor Sylvester so these babka sisters are interested in making Bob because they are Bakers they are very competitive and they decide they're going to have a baking contest and they're going to see if Sylvester across the street will pick the best babka and so they take their babcos across the street Sylvester does the judging and he decides that one of them has made a chocolate vodka that one's the best in the world for chocolate and the other one has made a cinnamon vodka and that is in the best that's the best in the world for the cinnamon babka the illustrators are two sisters Tikka and Tata there's a babka recipe at the end not so shy this is a middle grade novel which is a play on the name shy s-h-a-i which is the the girl who is the heroine of the story so 12 year old Cheyenne has come from Israel to live in the United States she hates it here she hates everything about living in the United States she can't understand the language the kids are mean she encounters anti-Semitism she spends a chunk of the book trying to figure out ways to get back maybe when her grandparents come to visit from Israel she can go back with them she enters a contest for a free plane ticket she doesn't make it but in the end she realizes that there are many wonderful things in the United States she meets other kids who are also immigrants like she is and she really settles down and realizes that she can have a wonderful life here and that home is really where the heart is this is a very nice book a middle grade fiction next nothing could stop her this is another Illustrated middle grade book nothing could stop her the courageous life of Ruth Gruber Ruth Gruber was born in 1911 to American Jewish parents she became a journalist and activist at a time when women were not doing that sort of thing uh she was a photographer she wrote stories about what was going on in Nazi Germany she was in the Soviet Union documenting things that were going on there a very very remarkable woman at a time when most women were you know staying home and being Homemakers there's nice sidebars and you can see some illustrations here um I think this one is going to do very very well for us foreign Passover this is a super cute Passover story it's Pirates it's kids so there are pirates on their ship they're getting ready to celebrate Passover they're getting the ship ready but a storm comes up and the matzo balls start rolling off the ships and things start falling apart and eventually the ship you know is brought to a Shore and it's Passover and they don't have the stuff for their seder because it all fell off the ship so they find a house where there's a Seder going on they are invited in and they have a Seder with this family the storm blows over the moon comes up and they sail away next and the last book is duct tape Purim it was written by Jill Bloomfield it's really cute um it's kind of like a maker space thing um but I think it will be nice and we haven't done you know a porn book like this for a while and that wraps up our season for carbon so I think it'll be a good one thanks