Adventures in Mama-Land

You know how we're supposed to be modest and not go shouting our accomplishments from the rooftops? Well, sometimes, I'm a little too modest.  And then I need a talking-to from my miniature Social Media Coordinator, aka Naomi Rivka, age 13. Sitting around the Shabbos table, I mentioned that I'd finally finished my book of parsha poems, The Rhyming Torah .  And she asked the obvious question:  “So are you going to let people know?” As a busy little social media bug, she knows all about the ins and outs making your way to fame and fortune on the busy, busy internet of today.  And as my kid, obviously she wants me to succeed.  But I had to be honest. “I don’t know…” I said.  “I hadn’t really thought about it.” “Well, you at least have to tell your blog,” she announced. So that’s where this post comes in. I don’t usually do launches for my books, self-published or otherwise, but I probably should.  I’ve had a few just in the past year, and I believe each...

I confess, it’s been a rocky time, writing-wise.  Not that I’m not writing!  Actually, I’m writing more than ever, probably more than most writers do in a lifetime.  The problem is that most of it is your basic blah writing for clients, translating (from Hebrew to English), or essays for school. (Did I mention I’m a full-time grad student???  More about that later…) But somehow, despite having ZERO time to write the things I truly wish I was writing, I seem to have managed to finish not one but TWO book projects, and without further ado – I present… two gorgeous new books: Oma is 100 :  "It's been almost a hundred years since Oma was born, but she doesn't want a party..."  When a young girl’s grandmother decides she's too old for  a birthday party, the simple act of crocheting a blanket teaches them both an important lesson about love, family, and belonging.  This isn’t specifically a Jewish book, in that there are no Hebrew words or references to...

You might know already that here in Israel, this is a shemittah year. Shemittah is the 7th year of a 7-year cycle found in the Torah, and all year long, Torah-observant farmers aren't working their crops in the usual way.  Yet thanks to a few modern loopholes, many of us, even here, are just buying fruits and vegetables the normal way. I've been studying shemittah for the last couple of months with a wonderful group of ladies here in Kiryat Shmuel, using a book called (surprisingly enough!) Shemitah, by Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon .  (There are lots of ways to spell Shemittah!) If you live in Israel, your kids may find out about shemittah in school if they’re old enough.  But for younger kids, there’s not really any way to find out what it’s all about (at least, not that I could find).  When I lived outside of Israel, I knew nothing about it… let alone knowing enough to share some of the main ideas with my kids.  We read about it when we read the weekly parsha,...

I couldn’t decide what to call this book.  Avos?  Avot?  We live in Israel, but I am proudly Ashkenazi.  In my head I say Shabbos, Shavuos and Avos, but everybody around me says Shabbat, Shavuot and Avot.  I also still call our Chanukah candle-holder a menorah, resisting the “Chanukiyah” pull with all my strength. I went with Avot anyway, just as I have in most of my recent books.  There’s just too many of “them” out there… and when I say them, I mean also my own children, who are learning in Israeli schools.  The Family Torah is all-Ashkenazi, all the time.  But everything else is Sefardi, pronunciation-wise.  Including this book. It’s short but sweet:  a collection of children's rhymes (with illustrations) to introduce the Avos/Avot :  Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Yosef, plus Noach, Moshe, Shimshon and David. (Click on the cover or click here to see it on Amazon.) It’s based on poems and ideas I came up with while homeschool...

My favourite price in the world:  free.  And my favourite thing in the world:  a kids’ book.  (Yes, one of mine.) Please Like, Share and pass along this deal.  FREE UNTIL AUGUST 14 ONLY! Learn a little about Israel's modern history and its most beloved songwriter in this short kids' chapter book! This week (Aug 10-14), my book "Naomi Shemer: Teaching Israel to Sing" is FREE for Kindle. CLICK HERE TO BUY THE KINDLE VERSION FREE UNTIL AUGUST 14. I started writing this book when my daughter, named after Naomi Shemer, was a baby… but only finished it last year, when she was 8.  A long time in the making, but I think it’s worth every second.  (And I loved reading it to her and telling her about the amazing lady for whom she’s named. Acclaimed in her lifetime as the "First Lady of Israeli Song" and the author of unforgettable classics like Jerusalem of Gold (Yerushalayim shel Zahav), Naomi Shemer is almost unknown in the English-speaking world. With...

Hard to think about Sukkos (aka Sukkot), but believe it or not, we have less than 40 days until Rosh Hashanah now and you-know-what can’t be far behind.  I’ve always found this to be a yom tov without a lot of fun stories for the early elementary level… so I created one and called it We Didn’t Have an Etrog!   It’s been out for a while now, but I thought I’d take a few minutes to show it off here because life between now and then is going to be crazy-time for us.  :-o It's just not Sukkot without a lulav AND etrog! These children have worked hard to grow their etrog... but even hard work isn't enough without a bit of patience and some help from Hashem! Sample page views from We Didn’t Have an Etrog! (click images for larger version): To order now – in time for Sukkos! – click here !  I also have a number of other books available through CreateSpace.  and, of course… Because you’re not ordering directly from me, your order will NOT get caught in al...

Because I don’t have enough to do… I’m selling poems on fiverr!  Click here to see my gigs.  You’ve read ‘em here for years… you’ve bought ‘em on Amazon.com … and now you can OWN one of these fabulous masterpieces! For $5, you can buy a short (4-6 stanza) poem for anyone, on any topic.  (If you’ve never used fiverr before, it’s tons of fun to explore anyway). Because we’re moving in just a few weeks, this is just a “trial balloon.”  If it works out, obviously I’ll start it up again once we’re within wifi distance of a computer with a keyboard. Just figured this is something I’m good at that’s easy and fun to do.  Some people knit or sew masterpieces and sell them on etsy… but I don’t.  So if you’ve got a birthday or special occasion coming up, consider giving the Gift of Heartfelt Poetry… :-)

If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, they’re not EXACTLY new… but they are “nu?” in the sense of “Nu???  We knew these were great poems and we are thrilled that you had art done and are releasing these as books!!!” Although these poems exist on the hard drive and were originally written for this blog, they are far from ready for prime time.  Every time I open something up with the intention of putting it together in book form, I shudder and wonder how I could have put it out there in the first place, even just on a blog.  Believe me, there’s a significant amount of re-writing involved in putting any of these together.  Rewriting and frustration and head-scratching and making everything absolutely perfect . Here are some page previews. First, We Didn’t Have An Etrog! , a long, awkward title for a book about two kids waiting for their esrog to ripen.  I know, I know… I CALL it an esrog in real life, but after flipping and flopping I went with Sephardic ...

I have just shifted a bunch of books from Lulu to Amazon, as well as making a couple of new ones available that were sitting in the “almost ready to go live” hopper. They all have “Look Inside!” enabled, but the last two are newly added, and will take a couple of days to get fully set up… These last two are the same book in two different versions.  The “ Hashem Never Forgets ” version is geared towards observant Jewish families, while “ After a Thousand Years ” is religiously neutral, for Jewish or non-Jewish families.  The only changes, beyond using the term Hashem, are that the girl is named Faigy (not Andrea), the grandfather is referred to as Zeidy (not Grandpa), and a reference to her going to university is changed to seminary (not that I’m against university, but since my daughter’s heading to sem next year (before university), I thought I’d include it as a worthwhile endeavour for a young girl!). I do have a couple more projects with art on the go.  They will ...

Nearly 3 years ago, with great trepidation, I released my first printable that wasn’t free:  a Book of Centuries.  More heavily influenced by Charlotte Mason then than I am now, I wanted my kids to do this instead of a timeline because a) our house is tiny, b) our walls are cluttered, and c) I knew it would take us a looooong time to work on. Have you ever seen what happens to a piece of paper after it’s been clinging to the walls for a matter of years???  In my house, at least, it would be in illegible tatters. Anyway, I found lots of versions around, some free, some paid, but most of them had some sort of religious orientation – which is great; frankly, I wanted a religious orientation.  They just weren’t MY religious orientation.  I wanted a book that would show what Jews were doing around the time that various periods of civilization – the Renaissance, say, or the Industrial Revolution – were taking place.  Oh, yeah, and I wanted, hmm, no, NEEDED to s...

Never rains but it pours, and after weeks of neglecting this blog, I have poured my heart out today, trying to capture all my impressions of the homeschool conference before they’re gone. But I do want to stop for a minute and ask readers to consider buying my book, The Family Torah , a project I’ve poured my heart into for the last few months (wrapping up a few years’ work of originally writing these as free parsha summaries each week). Based on talking to people endlessly about the book at the Torah Home Education Conference yesterday, here are a few quick answers to the most basic questions: What’s the main idea of the book? The Family Torah tells the story of the Torah in plain English in a way that can be easily read aloud.  How did you choose what to include? I included everything! Well, not quite.  Going through the Torah parsha by parsha, I tried to include every major component of the narrative, while at the same time cutting things down for brevity where t...