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.

1) 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...

2) 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.

3) The hired girl

Author

Schlitz, Laura Amy

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

Winner of the 2016 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction
A 2016 Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Award Winner
Winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature

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

...

4) strange relations

This entry no longer exists in the catalog

5) 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...

6) Little & Lion

Author

Colbert, Brandy

Formats:

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"--

7) 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"--

8) 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.

9) 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.

10) 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.

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

Author

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

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.

12) The Berlin Boxing Club

Author

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.

13) The book thief

Author

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Playaway

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.

14) 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.

15) Today tonight tomorrow

Author

Solomon, Rachel Lynn

Series

Today tonight tomorrow volume 1

Description

"Throughout the years both Rowan and Neil have been at competition with one another on everything from who has the best ideas for school functions to which one will be their graduating class's valedictorian. However, in the twenty-four hours left they have as high school students, the two learn they share something much deeper than a rivalry"--

16) 28 days: a novel of resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto

Author

Formats:

Description

In Warsaw, Poland, in 1942, Mira faces impossible decisions after learning that the Warsaw ghetto is to be "liquidated," but a group of young people are planning an uprising against their Nazi captors.

17) Yes no maybe so

Author

Albertalli, Becky

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle, Playaway

Description

"YES Jamie Goldberg is cool with volunteering for his local state senate candidate--as long as he's behind the scenes. When it comes to speaking to strangers (or, let's face it, speaking at all to almost anyone) Jamie's a choke artist. There's no way he'd ever knock on doors to ask people for their votes...until he meets Maya. NO Maya Rehman's having the worst Ramadan ever. Her best friend is too busy to hang out, her summer trip is canceled, and...

18) A light in the darkness: Janusz Korczak, his orphans, and the Holocaust

Author

Description

Tells the story of Janusz Korczak, a Polish Jewish doctor who ran an orphanage for Jewish children in Poland and was eventually executed by the Nazis along with his staff and wards.

19) Anne Frank's diary: the graphic adaptation

Author

Description

"The only graphic biography of Anne Frank's diary that has been authorized by the Anne Frank Foundation and that uses text from the diary ... maintains the integrity and power of the original work. With ... illustrations and ample direct quotation from the diary, this edition [for young readers] will expand the readership for this important and lasting work of history and literature"--

Author

Nielsen, Jennifer A

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Playaway

Description

In 1942 sixteen-year-old Chaya Lindner is a Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Poland, a courier who smuggles food and documents to the isolated Jewish ghettos in southern Poland, depending on her forged papers and "Aryan" features--but when a mission goes wrong and many of her colleagues are arrested she finds herself on a journey to Warsaw, where an uprising is in the works.