Jewish American Heritage - Young Adults

Created on May 19, 2021, 3:28 pm

Last Updated April 30, 2024, 5:13 pm

May is Jewish American Heritage Month. For more information, see https://jewishamericanheritage.org/. For winners of the Sydney Taylor Book Award and lists of current and past winners, see https://jewishlibraries.org/sydney_taylor_book_award/. The Sydney Taylor Book Award, administered by the Association of Jewish Libraries, an affiliate of the American Library Association (ALA), is named in memory of the classic All-of-a-Kind Family series author Sydney Taylor. The award recognizes titles for children and teens that exemplify high literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience.

61) The City Beautiful

Author

Polydoros, Aden

Description

Death lurks around every corner in this unforgettable Jewish historical fantasy about a city, a boy, and the shadows of the past that bind them both together. Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity, and he dreams of the day he'll have enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania. But when Alter's best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in...

62) La ladrona de libros

Author

Description

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

63) We'll soon be home again

Author

Bab Bonde, Jessica

Description

Based on interviews with six Holocaust survivors, these first-person point of view stories relate living through the de-humanization and starvation in concentration camps and the industrial-scale mass murder in extermination camps.

64) RBG's brave & brilliant women: 33 Jewish women to inspire everyone

Author

Epstein, Nadine

Description

"A collection of biographies of Jewish female role models--selected in collaboration with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and including an introduction written by the Supreme Court justice"--

65) Alma presses play

Author

Description

"Alma's life is a constant of halfways: She's half-Chinese, half-Jewish; her parents spend half the time fighting, and the other half silent; and, at thirteen, she's halfway through becoming a woman. Then comes the year when everything changes, and her life is overtaken by constant endings: friends move away, romances bloom and wither, her parents file for divorce, and just like that her childhood seems to be over. Among this world of confusing beginnings,...

66) What if it's us

Author

Albertalli, Becky

Series

What if it's us volume 1

Formats:

Book, Playaway, eBook, eAudiobook

Description

Told in two voices, this is the story of Arthur, a summer intern from Georgia, and Ben, a native New Yorker, whose meeting seems like fate, but after three attempts at dating fail they wonder if the universe is pushing them together or apart.

67) Zoe Rosenthal is not Lawful Good

Author

Description

Planning is Zoe Rosenthal's superpower. She has faith in a properly organized to-do list and avoids unnecessary risks. Her mental checklist goes something like this: 1) Meet soulmate: DONE! 2) Make commitment: DONE! 3) Marriage: TO COME! (after college). She isn't sure which college yet, but it will have a strong political science department, since her perfect boyfriend, Simon, plans to "save the country," as his sister puts it, "and the planet and...

68) Someday we will fly

Author

DeWoskin, Rachel

Description

Lillia, fifteen, flees Warsaw with her father and baby sister in 1940 to try to make a new start in Shanghai, China, but the conflict grows more intense as America and Japan become involved.

69) The hired girl

Author

Schlitz, Laura Amy

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle, eAudiobook

Description

Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz brings her delicious wit and keen eye to early twentieth-century America in a moving yet comedic tour de force.
Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her

...

70) strange relations

This entry no longer exists in the catalog

71) Tough questions Jews ask: a young adult's guide to building a Jewish life

Author

Feinstein, Edward

Formats:

Description

What your rabbi probably has never told you, but could-if you'd only ask. "Every day I wonder if God is real, if the Torah is true. Every day I wonder why I'm a Jew. But that's part of being Jewish. In the Torah, we're called Yisrael-the ones who wrestle with God. Wrestling, asking, wondering, searching is just what God wants us to do! God loves good questions. Now tell me, what are your questions?" -from Chapter 1 In Judaism we're allowed to ask...

72) Little & Lion

Author

Colbert, Brandy

Formats:

Book, eBook, eAudiobook

Description

"Suzette returns home to Los Angeles from boarding school and grapples with her bisexual identity when she and her [stepbrother] Lionel fall in love with the same girl, pushing Lionel's bipolar disorder to spin out of control and forcing Suzette to confront her own demons"--

73) Dancing at the pity party: a dead mom graphic memoir

Author

Description

"Tyler Feder shares her story of her mother's first oncology appointment to facing reality as a motherless daughter in this ... graphic memoir"--

74) What the night sings

Author

Stamper, Vesper

Description

Liberated from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945, sixteen-year-old Gerta tries to make a new life for herself, aided by Lev, a fellow survivor, and Michah, who helps Jews reach Palestine.

75) The librarian of Auschwitz

Author

Iturbe, Antonio

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

Based on the experience of real-life Auschwitz prisoner Dita Kraus, this is the story of a girl who risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust.

76) Anna and the Swallow Man

Author

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

When her university professor father is sent by the Gestapo to a concentration camp, seven-year-old Anna travels the Polish countryside with the mysterious Swallow Man during World War II.

77) The Nazi hunters: how a team of spies and survivors captured the world's most notorious Nazi

Author

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle, eAudiobook

Description

Recounts how, sixteen years after the end of World War II, a team of undercover Israeli agents captured the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, in a remote area of Argentina and brought him to trial in Israel for crimes committed during the Holocaust.

78) The Berlin Boxing Club

Author

Formats:

Description

In 1936 Berlin, fourteen-year-old Karl Stern, considered Jewish despite a non-religious upbringing, learns to box from the legendary Max Schmeling while struggling with the realities of the Holocaust.

79) The book thief

Author

Formats:

Book, Playaway, eBook, Kindle, eAudiobook

Description

Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

80) The way back

Author

Description

A historical fantasy that follows Eastern European teens Yehuda and Bluma on a journey through the Far Country, the Jewish land of the dead.