News you can (maybe) use: I'm going to be reopening to queries the first 10 days of every month. (Trying out this new-fangled strategy to keep the volume manageable). And checking the calendar...that means I'm reopening tomorrow, March 1.
querytracker.net/query/querye...
We are so excited to welcome @tajmccoy.bsky.social to the LDLA team! Follow the 🧵for more info about what she's looking to find for her list!
Here is the pre-RFK vaccination schedule for your kids. Please download it before he is confirmed and changes/deletes it.
Give it to your pediatrician and say this is the schedule you want your kids on.
Making this my pinned post.
I'm still struggling with it, and have sent a few projects out that straddle the YA/Adult line, but perhaps don't quite fit the NA parameters...but haven't found my groove. I think I'd prefer to be more fully in either bucket.
The DS9 episode where Frankie Eyes takes over Vic Fontaine’s casino is basically how I picture Trump taking over the Kennedy Center.
Totally sucks. Accessibility is such a thing and so many places don't have small craft or fabric stores but do have a Joann. And when I need some batting or basics, it's always a place I knew I could go without having to order online. It's going to send a lot of people to Hobby Lobby and...yikes.
For Adult, some of the same. Nothing too self-serious. I love a fun concept with a strong voice. Thinking of THURSDAY MURDER CLUB or FINLEY DONOVAN as a good example. I'm up for SFF but more accessible and commercial. Or cozy!
For MG and YA, I could use some projects to reinvigorate things. Humor and optimism and joy would be nice. Fanciful, fantastic twists. Books that have FUN and let readers have fun. (I really can't handle depressing stories right now.)
MG, YA or adult, I'm always looking for high-concept, commercial reads. Great plots and hooks. Strong voices and characters in those well-drawn worlds and situations. I'm up for some genre blending. A rom-com in a dystopian world? Agatha Christie in space? Murder mystery and dragons? Do it.
I haven't done an #MSWL day in a hot minute. I'm not open to queries just yet. Probably March? But my general categories don't tend to change that much... I updated my page here anyway:
www.manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/el...
Join @joshuaslevy.bsky.social, author of FINN AND EZRA'S BAR MITZVAH TIME LOOP, Sydney Taylor Honor Book in the Middle Grade Category, on the next blog tour stop.
Hosted at bookoflifepodcast.substack.com/p/podcast-fi...
View the full blog tour schedule at jewishlibraries.org/2025-blog-to...
#STBA
Look, I’m still salty the Lions aren’t in this game, but Philly is making this worthwhile.
Yes.
Philly is a brick wall tonight.
And yours as well.
And agree. This would have destroyed them all over again.
100%. It's a weird way to justify a change NOW. Lashon hara rules really boil down to "if you're not talking about Torah, you're probably committing lashon hara." So...basically all human interaction. Using it here feels like "Quick! Someone make this statement more Jewish."
This is a stretch from the statement, but part of the lashon hara prohibitions are also about hearing it or believing it being just as bad as saying it....so I guess don't be on a platform where it abounds? Not like that wasn't true before, but...
You know, I vaguely remember your family being from Munkacs. I grew up with a lot survivors from there and my bubbie's town. Somehow they found each other here.
Epigenetic trauma is interesting. I don't really know how to explain all the ways their experiences still play out in my life. The subtle ways my father adapted to his parents' trauma, which now play out in how I engage the world as a Jew. I wish more people knew. It's real and not all in the past.
My grandparents have been dead many years now. I miss them every day. I wish more people could have benefited from knowing a Holocaust survivor personally. I look around now and I am just terrified we're walking into this all over again. And only some of us see it.
But they both survived. And went "home"...to my grandmother's hometown of Uzhhorod (now in Ukraine). They met at a soup kitchen. They got married. They fled west. Had my uncle in a DP camp in Germany. Eventually got sponsored by the JDC and made it to the US and built a whole new life.
My grandfather was sent on a death march, where his job was to drag dead bodies to the side of the road. He narrowly escaped through a loose board of a barn wall, in which he'd been locked inside with other prisoners, just before the Nazis bulldozed the building. Only a few got out.
A black and white photo of a young man and woman looking at each other, smiling.
It's Holocaust Remembrance Day. Auschwitz was liberated 80 years ago. Both my bubbie and zayde survived Auschwitz, but neither was liberated there. My grandmother had been transferred to a labor camp, making Nazi uniforms, and freed by the Russian army there. 🧵
Our first winter in our house we had the sewer line bust. Also from roots of a now-dead tree on the easement. In our case they had to dig up the whole road because the main was on the other side of the street. $25k later...insurance doesn't usually cover sewer lines, I hate to say....
A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.
Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. It did not start from gas chambers.
This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.
Auschwitz took time.
I don't know how because literally it's the same people going from this happy stuff to the horrible stuff.
For one whole hour, my feed here was filled with children's books winning awards and not panic and it was glorious. Alas, back to the pit of despair we go....
A powerpoint slide presenting a Sydney Taylor Honor award to FINN & EZRA'S BAR MITZVAH TIME LOOP by Joshua S. Levy
Congrats again @joshuaslevy.bsky.social! A Sydney Taylor Honor for FINN & EZRA! So so so happy for you!
We watched it and all loved it. The kids couldn’t wait for the finale. It was fun!
6yo: Mom, what’s 9 times 5?
Me: 45
6yo: So if 9 bears each ate 5 pizzas, that’s how many pizzas you’d need to order?
You’re welcome. Happy Friday.
