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Johanna Hurwitz
Searching for Jewish Clues
Nancy Drew wasn’t Jewish. Neither were The Bobbsey Twins, Heidi, Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Laura Ingalls Wilder, or my all-time favorites, Betsy, Tacy and Tib (by Maud Hart Lovelace). In fact, there was not a single Jewish child in any book that I read during the 1940’s. Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a Kind Family wasn’t published until 1951 when I was fourteen and no longer looking for reading material in the children’s room of the public library.
Although I came from a very assimilated Jewish home, I was nevertheless very aware that my background was different from my Christian classmates’. It would have meant a great deal to me to have found Jewish book friends with which I could identify and even learn more about my own heritage.
Happily, many of the most talented and best loved children’s book writers of recent years like David Adler, Judy Blume, Barbara Cohen, Karen Hesse, Marilyn Sachs, Maurice Sendak, Jane Yolen and Jane Breskin Zaiben have been Jewish. Their books and the characters in them have given new role models for today’s children.
Johanna Hurwitz is the author of more than 40 children’s books including Once I Was a Plum Tree, The Rabbi’s Girls, The Adventures of Ali Baba Bernstein, and Baseball Fever.
Sugar & Spice – and Beyond
The articles in this special section:Girls Who Thought about Sex
Barbara Brenner
They were all Orthodox
Deborah Brodie
So I Had to Write it Myself
Floreva G. Cohen
Safe in America
Paula J. Caplan
On Yom Kippur When My Stomach Growls
Lisa Pilar Cowan
Something Good from Hebrew School
Gila Gevirtz
Uh oh! Babar Celebrates Christmas
Michelle Edwards
Sarah Was My Soulmate
Rebecca Goldstein
God Will Have to Allow It
Esther Hautzig
The Impact of Reality
Yona Zeldis McDonough
Jewish Rabbits
Rachel Kadish
Searching for Jewish Clues
Johanna Hurwitz
Poor Marjorie Morningstar!
Fran Manushkin
The Book under My Pillow
Leslea Newman
Please Write One More…
Elizabeth Michaelson
Deborah & Letty
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Jewish Before I Was American
Norma Simon
At Last, Jewish Fairy Tales
Jane Yolen
Roseanne (Yes!) on Yidn in Utah
Roseanne
Israeli Bedtime Stories
Nava Semel
Finding Else Ury’s Suitcase at Auschwitz
Anne L. Fox
Feminist (But Not Jewish)
Sara N.S. Meirowitz
Jewish (But Not Feminist)
Sara N.S. Meirowitz
Powerful Adolescent Girls
Naomi Danis
Books for the 90s
Sara N.S. Meirowitz