{"id":85662,"date":"2025-01-27T17:04:17","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T22:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=85662"},"modified":"2025-01-27T17:04:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T22:04:17","slug":"teen-novel-about-women-vampires-wins-a-top-prize-for-jewish-childrens-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/teen-novel-about-women-vampires-wins-a-top-prize-for-jewish-childrens-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen novel about women vampires wins a top prize for Jewish children\u2019s books"},"content":{"rendered":"

By PENNY SCHWARTZ<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 By day, sisters Molly and Clara appear to be modern-day New Yorkers, living in an indie cinema that was once home to a Yiddish theater. At night, they transform into estries \u2014 owl-like women vampires who prey on men.  <\/p>\n

\"\"

The awards were announced Monday by the Association of Jewish Libraries at the American Library Association\u2019s  LibLearnX conference in Phoenix.<\/p>\n

\u201cNight Owls\u201d won the gold medal for young adult fiction. \u201cAn Etrog from Across the Sea\u201d by Deborah Bodin Cohen and Kerry Olitzky, illustrated by Stacey Dressen McQueen, took the gold medal in the picture book category, and \u201cThe Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival,\u201d by Estelle Nadel and Bethany Strought, with illustrations by Sammy Savos, won top prize in the middle-grade category. <\/p>\n

Set in the early 18th century, the lavishly illustrated \u201cAn Etrog from Across the Sea\u201d tells the story of a Sephardic Jewish family living in Colonial-era New York. A young girl named Rachel is worried when her father, a tradesman, doesn\u2019t return home from Corsica in time for Sukkot. It\u2019s based on the life of Luis Moises Gomez, a real-life British merchant who settled in New York.<\/p>\n

Co-author Olitzky is a former pulpit rabbi and former  executive director of Big Tent Judaism, an outreach institution.<\/p>\n

\"\"

In other awards, Hanna R. Neier won the Sydney Taylor manuscript award for \u201cWhen You Write Back,\u201d time-travel novel layered in mystery. The award honors unpublished manuscripts of Jewish fiction targeting ages 8-13.<\/p>\n

Winners will receive their awards at the AJL\u2019s annual conference in June.<\/p>\n

Writing about \u201cNight Owls,\u201d Vishny said that estries can be traced to Sefer Hasidism. The medieval text describes estries as witch-like creatures called who suck the blood of their victims. <\/p>\n

Vishny lays the blame for their obscurity, along with most other Jewish magical creatures, on the systematic, antisemitic destruction of European Jewish culture, Vishny wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a tiny people whose culture our enemies have long sought to destroy,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Named in memory of Sydney Taylor, the author of the \u201cAll-of-a-Kind-Family\u201d series of young adult books, the Association of Jewish Libraries awards honor works that \u201cexemplify high literary standards, while authentically portraying the Jewish experience,\u201d Aviva Rosenberg, chair of the Sydney Taylor awards committee, said at the ceremony.<\/p>\n

\"Share