David Grossman was awarded the Man Booker Award!

Last week, Israeli author דויד גרוסמן / David Grossman won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize for his book סוס אחד נכנס לבר / A Horse Walks into a Bar.

David Grossman writes books for children, teenagers, and adults. His books have been translated into about 30 languages and he has been awarded many literary prizes.

Here are a few of his books for younger children.

Grossman has a wonderful short series for children called ספורי איתמר /Stories about Itamar.  Itamar is a little red headed boy with extremely good parents,  There is so much love in this series.    Ages 3-7.

 Here are three of the books from the series:

In the book איתמר וכובע הקסמים השחור / Itamar and the Black Magic Hat, Itamar finds a large black hat. His father tells him it's a magic hat. It can change creatures to other creatures but can't change them back to their original form.  Itamar happily changes his father into a monkey but then can't change him back . In the end, Itamar finds an original way to turn his father back to himself.

Itamar would love to get send a letter in the mail and get a response. But he has a huge problem.  He doesn't know how to write.  His father finds a unique way to help him "send" a letter. Read איתמר מכתב / Itamar Letter to find out how his father solves Itamar's problem.

Itamar has a special talent  - he can walk on walls.  He can also jump into the pictures on his walls.  The mother and father lions in his jungle picture look sad.  Their cub has run away and jumped on a train.  With the help of the girl in another picture, Itamar is able to bring the cub back to his parents.  You can hear David Grossman read איתמר מטיל על הקירות /  Itamar Climbs on the Walls and see the animated version of the book.

Have any of your children ever had an imaginary friend?  In החברה הסודית של רחלי / Racheli's Secret Friend, Racheli has an imaginary friend called Hadas.  Hadas is part of the family and joins Racheli and her family for all their activities.  Hadas, of course, sleeps with Racheli every night.  One night Racheli has to say good-night to Hadas at her house.  Her house?  She isn't sleeping with Racheli?  Racheli has a novel idea how to gently let go of her imaginary friend.

Ages 4-6.

Jonathan's father put him on his back and calls out " Who wants a sack of flour?"His father asks quite a few inanimate objects that question.  Jonathan doesn't want any of them to buy him.  Finally, his father asks his mother if she wants to buy a sack of flour.  Jonathan happily agrees to be bought for the price of two kisses.

?מי רוצה שק-קמח/Who Wants a Bag of Flour? will put a smile on everyone's face. Ages  4-6.

I recommend another book about Jonathan in an earlier post.  He was a  very young detective in the book יונתן בלש ממש / Jonathan the Effective Detective.

Tip no. 28

Golda Meir (1898-1978) was the fourth Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 - 1974. But did you know that she was also a librarian in Milwaukee and in Chicago before she made aliyah?

Three Queens for Purim

Clip art by Liz Elsby

Instead of writing about Purim children's books, I decided to write about books which have to do with the word מלכה / queen.  Only one book is actually a Purim book.

In the book מלכה בירושלים/  Malkah, A Queen in Jerusalem,  Malkah is sad.  Her mother promised to sew a queen costume for her but now has no time.  A crying Malkah runs out into the streets of early 20th century Jerusalem and finds her way to the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design where she meets its founder, Boris Schatz. Schatz asks the weavers and silversmiths at the Academy to create a queen costume for Malkah.  The authors תמי שם-טוב / Tami Shem-Tov and רחלי זנדבנק / Racheli Zandbank bring history to life.
For ages 5-7.

סעודה אצל המלכה / A Royal Banquet with the Queen is written and illustrated by רותו מודן / Rutu Modan.  Nina's parents keep correcting her table manners.  When Nina gets invited to dinner by the Queen of England, she is unimpressed by the food and asked for spaghetti and ketchup.  Perplexed by the array of silverware, Nina eats the spaghetti with her hands. The Queen and her guests decide to follow Nina's lead.  Your children will enjoy seeing how the royal guests eat their dinner.

 I love Modan's  comic book style illustrations ( she is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy).  You and your children/grandchildren will spend quite a bit of time examining every detail of the banquet pictures. Ages 4-7.

This book has been translated into English as Maya Makes a Mess.

נסיכת השמש/ The Sun Princess is not your average children's book.  דויד גרוסמן/David Grossman wrote this beautiful, poetic book for all ages. Noga asks her mother   " If I'm your little princess, does that mean that you are a queen?"  Her mother explains to Noga that she is the Sun Queen one day a year.  Amazingly enough, tomorrow is that day.  The next morning,  Noga and her mother get up before sunrise to greet the sun.  They dance and sing to encourage the sun to rise. Slowly the first rays of sunlight appear and the birds start singing. In the evening, the mother and daughter encourage the sun to go to sleep.  They watch the sunset until there is only a sliver of red left between the sky and the water.  Ages 4+

Tip no. 17

המכללה האקדמית לחינוך ע"ש דויד ילין

המרכז לספרות ילדים ונוער

 Are you looking for a children's book on a certain subject?.  You can find lists of children's books on many different subjects at   The Center for Children's Books at the David Yellin Academic College of Education in Jerusalem. Some of the subjects included are  Food, Feminism, Holidays, Friendship, and  Age. 

Wishing you a Happy Purim!

  !פורים שמח

Kid Detectives

I love detective stories.  When I was a girl, I read the entire Nancy Drew series.  Several of the most popular detective series have been translated into Hebrew.  This includes ננסי דרו / Nancy Drew, בני הרדי/ The Hardy Boys,  and השבעייה הסודית/ The Secret Seven.

יונתן בלש ממש/ Jonathan The Effective Detective by דויד גרוסמן / David Grossman will be your child's first detective story.  Jonathan's slippers are missing. His green cup is missing and his father's glasses.  What's going on?  Is there a thief in the house?  Little Jonathan decides to be the house detective and find the missing items. In the end, Jonathan not only finds out who took the items but why.
Ages 3-6.











Ariel Berkowitz has a mystery to solve.  But his mother thinks other things are more important than detective work.  Ariel promises to clean his room so his mother allows him to solve one more mystery.  Who keeps stealing the pizza delivery boy's  skates? Find the answer in ברקוביץ חוקר פרטי: תעלומת הגלגליות האבודות / Berkovitz Private Detective: The Mystery of the Lost  Skates by יורגן בנשרוס / Jurgen Banscherus.  This book and the other two books in the series are translated from the  German.  Ages 7-9.








אריך קסטנר / Erich Kastner ( 1899 - 1974)  wrote אמיל והבלשים / Emil and the Detectives in 1929.  This book was one of the first detective books written specifically for children. Though Kastner is a German author, he has always been a very popular in Israel.  I'm sure it helps that he was anti-Nazi. Almost all of Kastner's  many children's books have been translated into Hebrew.

Emil's mother gives him money to bring to his grandmother in Berlin.  It's a large sum of money and he pins it to the lining of his jacket.  He falls asleep during the train trip and when he wakes up, the money is gone! In Berlin,  Emil meets a boy named Gustav. Gustav and his gang of "detective" friends help Emil find the cash.  Ages 9-11.






שמונה בעקבות אחד/ Eight Following One by ימימה אבידר- טשרנוביץ / Yemima Avidar Tchernovitz is the first children's detective book written in Hebrew. It was published in 1945.  A city boy named Hagai is sent to a kibbutz during WWII to get away from the bombings in Haifa.  There he meets a gang of children and their dog whose leader is named Amos.  The children follow a dangerous German spy.  The spy captures Amos.  How will the gang save their leader? This book is a great page-turner.

A new edition was published in 1996.  This edition was quite unusual. Fifty years after the book was first published,  Avidar-Chernavitz and her daughter updated the vocabulary and writing style in the book to make it more accessible to today's children.  Ages 10-12.

Tip no. 16




Several years ago, I took an online course in children's series books. During the course, I was sad to learn that the author of the Nancy Drew series was not really Caroline Keene.  There is no author by the name of Caroline Keene.  The Nancy Drew series was written by a series of ghostwriters for the Stratemeyer Syndicate.  Ghostwriters from the syndicate also wrote The Hardy Boys series.