Jewish Joy with Laurel Snyder

Laurel Snyder, author of The Book of Candles: Eight Poems for Hanukkah (Clarion Books), illustrated by Leanne Hatch, joins Matthew to talk about lowering all the barriers and modeling yourself on something you love.

Listen along:

About the book: Laurel Snyder, author of The Book of Candles: Eight Poems for Hanukkah by Laurel Snyder; Illustrated by Leanne Hatch. Published by Clarion Books.

From Sydney Taylor Award winner and National Jewish Book Award honoree Laurel Snyder comes a warm, reverential, surprising, and fresh story of one very special Hanukkah.

In a dark, dark room,

one thin candle

wakes, bursts to life

Thus begins the first night of Hanukkah in one child’s home. But what does the light from the candle mean? What are the words everyone is singing? What will each of these eight nights hold? Family and friends, takeout dinners and flat tires, traditions new and old—it’s all part of this year’s timeless, timely holiday celebration.

More:

Visit Laurel Snyder online at laurelsnyder.com

Other helpful links:

• Laurel Snyder at the Highlights Foundation

Learn more about the Highlights Foundation and their upcoming programs by visiting www.highlightsfoundation.org 

Transcript:

NOTE: Transcript created by Descript. I've attempted to clean up any typos, grammatical errors, and formatting errors where possible.

Matthew: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Children's Book Podcast, where we celebrate the power of storytelling to reflect our world, expand our perspectives, and foster connections between readers of all ages, brought to you in partnership with the highlights foundation, positively impacting kids by amplifying the voices of storytellers who inform, educate, and inspire children.

To become their best selves. I'm your host, Matthew Winner teacher, librarian, writer, and a fan of kids. Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can hear the Children's Book Podcast early and ad free by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. Click the banner on your podcast app at any time. Today on the podcast, we're sitting down with Laurel Snyder, the Sydney Taylor Award winner and National Jewish Book Award honoree.

Who's writing has long captured The Quiet Magic of Childhood and [00:01:00] Family Laurel's. Newest book, the Book of Candles, eight poems for Hanukkah Illustrated by Leanne Hatch is a luminous meditation on light memory, and meaning across eight poems. One for each night of Hanukkah, Laurel explores how this ancient holiday intertwines the sacred and the everyday.

A burst of laughter, a takeout dinner, a flat tire. A song in the glow of the menorah. Each page is both timeless and timely honoring Jewish tradition while opening space for all readers to reflect on the light that carries us through darkness. This is a tender and deeply personal conversation about faith, family ritual, and the beauty of holding joy and grief in the same moment.

It's also a conversation about celebrating all the things that make you happy. This book comes at a time when Laurel has found it difficult to engage with the world, and I am [00:02:00] honored to be a space where she can show up fully and interrogate the ways that world conflicts influence how we talk about the art we make and the stories we tell.

She is a friend and a voice whom I cherish most dearly, and I hope you too are pulled into this conversation. Please welcome Laurel Snyder to the podcast.

Laurel: My name is Laurel Snyder and I am the author of Most recently, the Book of Candles, eight poems for Hanukkah. And I, my pronouns are she, her. 

Matthew: Laura, you've been a friend of mine since the beginning of this show. Yeah. Realizing as I'm recording ironically, I also a week or two ago recorded another conversation with Aaron Becker, who Oh, I think after our first conversation you introduced me to him 'cause he was having his debut with Journey.

So just a funny thing that the two of you would be like coming into [00:03:00] my world at the same time. It's just funny. That's all. That is funny. 

Laurel: Yeah, we go way, way back. Oh my God. And it's what's crazy, I just saw he was doing something with his editor for like a mock called the CO that I saw online yesterday.

Yeah. And they, I forget how many years it was, but they were talking about how long they've been working together. And it just was crazy to me like that we've all been in this business now for I still feel like I'm new and figuring it out, and somehow I'm like. 20 years into all this, 

Matthew: it's crazy.

It's terrific. Hey, so this new book, the Book of Candles, do you mind sharing a brief book talk for folks that haven't encountered it yet? Yeah. I, is it okay if I read just a few lines? Oh, goodness. I would love that. 

Laurel: Thank you. I feel like this is a book, this has been, part of the challenge of this book is, it's hard to describe because it's not a book about, if that makes sense.

Like it's a book that wanted to capture the feeling of the holiday of Hanukkah. Okay. And other things too but it's it's, I don't always write in things that get identified as poems, though. I always think of poetry as being in my work. But but this [00:04:00] is very much a book of these tiny little poems that I just wanted to capture, like what it's like on Hanukkah to look at the candles.

But there are all these different ways that we interact with the candle. Sometimes it's you're tired and you can barely make it. Sometimes it's awe, quiet, awe. Sometimes it's like rambunctious family time, and if there's all these different ways that the holiday presents because you celebrate it for eight nights.

But trying to capture any one thing or tell one story for Hanukkah felt inadequate. So it's not, it's a hard book to describe because it's about lots of different moments that may or may not feel of a piece, if that makes sense. And one of my thoughts about it is, I'd love to think of it as a book that families would use the way that we use Advent Calendars if you Celebrate Christmas, that this is a book of eight discrete poems that has eight discreet thoughts for the holiday.

Like something to sit and think about and know. And it just seemed to me that my dream for this book would be that people would buy it. And they would put it on their table wherever they keep their hanukia or their menorah that they would set [00:05:00] it there and that each night they would read one little poem and explore one thought.

And as kids get older, they would understand the thoughts more and interact differently with the poems. Yeah. And that these would just be something that was like a piece of the ritual at a supplement. So I'll just read the first night. In a dark room, one thin candle wakes bursts to life in a sip of silence.

And now there are faces, mama. But what are we waiting for? Patience. Oh look, there's another one. Now a second flame to follow the first as the room holds its breath. Just a moment before breaking into song.

But I don't know the words. So that's the first poem, and then the first thought is a thought for the first night, the lone candle called the Shamash Servant in Hebrew [00:06:00] should always be set apart from the other eight candles. In Hanukia, we often think of the Shamash as the helper candle because we use it to light the other eight.

But the Shamash is also there to provide regular light. So that's the first night and then each night is a little bit different. And and then at the end there's an author's note that kind of explains my feelings about Hanukkah and the way that my family celebrated Hanukkah. And it's maybe meaningful to say that my youngest son.

My youngest son just left for college, and so as I've been thinking about this book and thinking about going out and celebrating this book with communities I was realizing like, oh this Hanukkah will be different like that. We've moved outta the part where it's my job to walk my kids through this experience every night for eight nights and and to think about how to celebrate it as a family and how to make time for it.

It can be really hard to make time for Hanukkah because it's not. One day separated. It's part of eight days that you have to live your regular life too. So I've just been very aware that like that, [00:07:00] that I don't know what their, my kids' Hanukkah rituals will be from here on out. 

Matthew: That's so interesting.

Yeah. Even you just saying that the way it reveals the thing that I was wrestling with the book, I think there's so many really beautiful moments and so maybe it's great to say moments as you say. Your intention is almost to read this night by night. Yeah. Read a piece this night by night.

I thought you and Leanne both captured so many sweet moments and and I felt so much as though you weren't showing us a families celebration observation of Hanukkah but more trying to capture. So many different experiences as well as having this voice alongside saying Hey, you might do it differently.

And that's great too. Yeah. But also I felt also it was also written for me going Hey you have friends that celebrate Hanukkah? Let me tell you a little bit about our why. Totally. Yep. That's great. That's a lot of things to juggle though. 

Laurel: We, it's funny, we often think about I books [00:08:00] have layers to them, right?

There's a million different ways to see books as having layers. Of course. Like every reader who comes to any book comes to it as a different reader, right? So if you and I both read Goodnight Moon, which we've both read a million times before, but we read different. Versions of Goodnight Moon. We see ourselves differently in the book.

We see the world differently in the book. We compare it to our world. We think about how we sleep or what our family is. Just any book does that. So I feel like there's a degree to which as an author, you always have to give up a certain amount of control in the process. Like it's not my job to manage you through anything I've ever written.

Of course, it's my job to create something that I hope. Like opens its arms up to being read in all these different ways, and I will never know. It's funny, I get, I have a novel called Orphan Island and the number still like eight years later after it published, I still get all these letters from people that.

W sort of are, want to tell me how they read that book in particular? You know that they read it as a religious book or they read it after the death of somebody, or [00:09:00] they read it as they were going through a big transition, or as their kids were leaving home or as their kid's, the book their kid took to camp.

That there's, because it's, because the more metaphorical and more, and a more sort of open a book is the more space there is for people to finish the story or to complete some part of it. Anyway, the point of all that is to say. For me, this book has two very specific layers that are pretty obvious and one is the poems and one is the thoughts.

And I think what I really wanted with this book, my family is a very non-traditional family. My come from an interfaith family. My kids have been raised Jewish. We celebrate everything, but we celebrate in our way and we don't live in it like deeply. Cohesively Jewish community in our neighborhood or in our school.

So my kids were often like the only Jewish kid in their environment. And we did things our own way and. I wanted to present a book that lowered all the barriers for what is an acceptable way to do this holiday, right? That there's a million different, there's a million different permutations of how people might wanna [00:10:00] celebrate Hanukkah, and it changes over time and it changes by community.

So I really wanted to lower that so that there is a family like racing in the door with a box of pizza after being late from, whatever that day. Or going to grandma's house or doing it all by yourself. But the point is that the child in the story is brand new to all of this. He's just barely old enough to grasp it.

He's not lit the candles himself before and he's taking it in for the first time, as a conscious person. And so the book is him learning about this holiday and this very visceral. Physical, just obs osmosis way which I hope anybody reading would be like, that seems like a nice thing to do, that there's no rules to the poems.

But then the thoughts are all more sort of content based. Because I think both are important, right? You wanna open the door, you wanna lower the barriers. You want everybody to feel welcome in the things you care about. And also you wanna honor the fact that there is a tradition and there is.

Like wisdom and there is, there are [00:11:00] questions that we ask and ways we think about things and customs and rituals that you don't wanna lose just because you've lowered the barriers. And so I felt like the way to do that was to create these sort of two tiers to the story so that everybody feels welcome in the book and also.

I would like to think a lot of people will learn some little something, even if they think they know everything there is about Hanukkah. They may learn something from one of the notes.[00:12:00] 

Matthew: Is this a book you could have written 20 years ago? As I'm hearing you talk, it sounds so much this is the Laurel Snyder of it all is why it's really working for me. But this is you crafting books for over 20 years. It feels, I hear your thought about it. I hear. I hear you telling me much. Like I could tell you, here's why I think this lesson works.

But I'm also, when I'm teaching, not thinking, here's what I need to do to make it work. There's something intuitive about Yeah. Teaching at this point for me. I'm wondering if that's what is coming out of this for you, because I. I think what I wanna say is I don't think the Book of Candles is structured maybe a way that any other author might do it.

I've known you for a while and so it very much, and so I can't also dismiss that I'm putting on our relationship onto this book, but sure. I can't help but read you [00:13:00] from the page. W on as I read it, and I quite adore that, but I just wonder if it's if where you are now in life with kids out at college and having lived Yeah.

A fair bit of life. Is that why, what's, maybe it's 

Laurel: I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's a really interesting, there, there are a lot of parts of me in this book. I will say that this book came out of the pandemic, so I had a really hard. A really hard time writing. In some ways I probably had an easier pandemic than a lot of people, but it just, what it did was it made me fully a mom and a household, and a provider, and a protector and all of those parts.

Like my job was to like find interesting things for other people to do all day. And and my creative energy was going into my garden and my cooking and my, and I really just got stuck. Stuck. I like couldn't, I couldn't make work and everything I tried to make was. Off. And it's a long story that I won't share all of, but the end result was that I had stumbled and tried to write a Hanukkah book a couple of times and really wasn't doing a good job with it [00:14:00] because I was trying to make what I thought a Hanukkah book was supposed to be.

And I think what happened, if my memory is correct, is that my agent at the time, Tina said. Just go write a poem. That's go home. Go home to poems, that's your thing. Go home to poems. Write a poem. And I did, and it came out in this way because I thought the sort of, when you can't write, one of the best things you can do is to model yourself on something that you love.

Take something that you wish you had written and stumbled in that direction. And I took the poem, 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and I thought. Okay. Instead of trying to write a book with 32 pages and 600 words, I'm going to just try to capture the spirit of Hanukkah and I'm gonna use the number eight because that's how many days in candles there are.

I'm gonna use the number eight and I'm gonna think of eight ways of looking at the candles, like the sort of, that was the project I set myself at that moment, but it was really something I did as like a whim. Because I was trying to break this incredibly stuck writing brain. [00:15:00] Yeah. And then I sent it to Tina and was like, this isn't at first I showed it some friends in a writing group and they said, oh, this is a picture book.

And then I sent it to Tina, hesitantly and was like, is this a picture book? And she was like, oh, this is totally a picture book. So it, I think what, to your point we're all different writers. Every, we're all different brains. We're all different creative people. And there are things that you think every, everyone would do that.

Like why wouldn't everybody not do that? But that's my specific set of in, it's if you take loosey goosey Jewish practice, love of the holiday, Hanukkah a feeling of being stuck and needing to break out of that. Yeah. And palate cleanse, a love of poetry. You take all of that, mix it together.

This is what you get. But this is what I always say to kids at school visits is like you're trying to write the book that only you can write. Like it doesn't work to try to write somebody else's book. So I think that this is very much my book and I think the part that probably is the mature voice the grown mother of adult kids kind of thing probably is that I feel more comfortable speaking with a tone of [00:16:00] authority like.

I don't know everything there is to know about Jewish practice. And I'm very comfortable entering rooms and saying, I don't know what's going on in here. Can someone teach me? But I also am, I've now spent 20 years teaching other people how to celebrate Hanukkah. And so I feel that there's a sense of authority that I can say, oh, this is what it is, or this is history, or this is tradition, or this is ritual.

And we may not even do it or think about it very much, but but you also have a right to this piece, 

Matthew: yeah. The thoughts. Were some of my favorite because I heard your voice in them. And that in particular felt very much. The poems were lovely and. I want to compliment you and say, I think some people are like, Ooh, poetry, I can just break lines and leave more white space.

And that makes it a poem. I think unfortunately, there's some people that are chasing the appeal of poetry. I don't know quite what I'm saying here. Yeah. But I, for me, as a reader, it's, I can feel good poetry when I read it. It moves me in a certain way. Even if it's not a poem that I [00:17:00] particularly.

Connect with if someone else is writing whatever. There's a difference in reading a novel in verse or reading a, a picture book that is poetic in language. Thank you than one that is trying to be, and in this way, your two distinct voices here. Yeah. Laura work really well, but boy that comforting voice, especially when we got to the part of the banana, breaking that voice, I thought there is such a caring, kind, welcoming to all of us voice.

I think you turned that page as a library and we are reading to that class and suddenly we're a banana. Why are there candles in a banana and you so lovingly go. Yeah, this is, it's this, because it's this and also it has a name, it's called a banana or whatever you 

Laurel: do. That is actually a true story.

Years and years ago when my kids were little, we drove back and forth to Baltimore a lot. As Uhhuh, I go back to Baltimore a lot and we drove to my mom's house. And I don't remember exactly what year it was and I haven't, but it was originally a, I made a Twitter post about it and I'm not on Twitter anymore.

But but we got to my [00:18:00] mom's house and I had packed, and that year we actually had Hanukkah candles. I had packed the candles and somehow forgotten to pack mime menorah into the car. And so we got to my mom's house. But the complicated part of my family is my mom's not Jewish. So I grew up in an interfaith family.

So we got to my mom's house. For Hanukkah and I forget what night it was. It was like night four or something, and we got to my mom's house, at nine o'clock at night, bleary-eyed and wanted to light the candles and there wasn't anything to use. And I will say it is a fine Jewish tradition that people often manufacture.

So like people will use Play-Doh or tinfoil or, oh great. You can make it out of anything as long you observe the rules. But I was my mom, I happened to be sitting in my mom's kitchen and there was a bowl of fruit on the counter. And so I, I was like, oh, that's a menorah shape.

And manufactured my first nuia or benoa. Oh, cool. Benoa. And so we did that. And then the first year we just did it like that. And then the second year I realized the Shamash really needs to be separated from the rest of the banana. So the next year I took a big chunk of tinfoil and [00:19:00] stuck it in one end of the banana.

And that became like the, the Sure. 

Matthew: The taller, yeah. 

Laurel: So that it was taller. So it evolved a little bit over the years, but then it became a tradition 'cause we're always traveling at the holidays. So I've done this in like hotel rooms in Iowa City. I've done this in all sorts of places. I think I've done this at NCTE.

So it's always been this thing. And then, but then one year I posted that original picture of it with a line that said the time of the nuia is upon us again or something. And a couple of different Jewish websites, kavaler and pJ Library picked it up and reposted it and so it like went a little bit viral.

And here's the weird thing, so two or three, maybe four years ago, I started seeing ceramic banana menorah. You are kidding. In shops. And I don't know, like I, I'll never know. It's awfully obnoxious. Did you affect culture, Laurel Snyder? I think I may have accidentally. Not that they know it was me, and certainly I'm sure other people have done this before.

I can't be the only person that's done [00:20:00] it. But now, like I have all these friends who now when I post my banana picture. At the holidays, which I do every year, I have all these people who are like, oh, I have one like that. And I'm like, yeah, that's amazing. And this is how things happen, right?

This is how we get three books about, sad bears in the same season, of course, right? You'll never know. Who knows what sparked, maybe I saw something that sparked my imagination in this way. I'll never know. But yeah, so there's a scene in the book where their car breaks down and they're near a grocery store and they go inside and they come out.

And in the book, the way we handled the shamash was they do, they have a, so they make a banana menorah on the hood of their car with birthday candles, and then there's a donut that they're using for the. Donuts are also part of Hanukkah. So there's a donut that they're using for the sham.

Matthew: Ah, I wanna read part of your book to you, because that voice mattered so much to me that I thought, oh, thank you. I wonder if Laurel gets to hear it back to her. If you don't mind, I wanna read to you a thought for the eighth [00:21:00] night. Okay. Because. Your sendoff is just so lovely and I thought you should have this back.

So I thought for the eighth night, there's a mid rush that on the last night of Hanukkah, if all of the candles go out at the same time, the smoke will carry your wishes to heaven. It has to be all of the candles at the same time because anything else isn't strong enough. I've never seen it happen, but I hope for it each year.

Oh, that's beautiful. You make me cry. Oh my goodness. That's beautiful. Thank you. That's beautiful. Again, as a librarian, reading it to a class of children who come from all different places that you would end a book with Hope. 

Laurel: Yeah. And 

Matthew: what you don't say there, but it feels like you do. 'cause I'm reading the words is it also feels like I, I hope for it for you too.

Yeah. And that. What we intuit through. That is just really beautiful. So thanks. You did a great job. You do a lot of great jobs, but you did a great job, Laurel. 

Laurel: Thank you. I really appreciate [00:22:00] it. This is a quiet book and it can be really hard. It's a niche book because it's Jewish. It's a holiday book, so it's only gonna come out.

Onto bookshelves in October every year or whatever. It's gonna have a very specific life and either it's gonna find its people who love it and pull it out each year and dust off their copy or give a copy to their grandchildren or whatever. It's either gonna find that readership or it's not a book that we can like.

It doesn't announce itself, so it's really lovely to feel it seen and read like that. It, I really appreciate. It's 

Matthew: lovely. It's lovely. And I will tell you, I have fifth graders every morning come into my library and help bring the book bins up to the class to collect for whatever library class I have that day.

And they bring 'em down and they scan them and whatever. And they also put all the books on display to make sure we have a fully stocked ready library. And one of my students put out. A holiday book, but a Christmas book, I think in this case just two weeks ago, Uhhuh. And the paraeducator was like.

Carson, what are you doing? But Chris, it's too early for that. Wouldn't you know that day I had a student check it out. So it might even just be, yeah, you [00:23:00] never know. Putting out a book of candles. Just seeing it might be just, there's something in there will appeal. Goodness, Leanne put a cat on the cover.

It could just be, I know the cat and candles. I wanna get this book. 

Laurel: Thank, it's great. We don't know why She did such a beautiful job. She did a beautiful job. I feel like when I got the finished copy, I looked at it and I thought, oh, I feel like this is a book that already existed.

It just felt like this book should have already existed. 

Matthew: It's lovely. And I love the effect of looking like she colored it with crans. Yeah. I love when you can see the marks. I really that textured quality. That's great. Hey, so you were telling me earlier that the pandemic was hard.

You were giving out all of your creativity. I went through the pandemic too, and when I went back to teaching things didn't get easier and I'm catching you at a time when the world feels harder than it's ever felt to me. For me, I've had to really monitor how I'm caring for myself.

I've had to cut out coffee during the school week 'cause it's my anxiety for. Things being difficult has been unfortunately amplified by caffeine and that's not been great. And I've replaced scrolling on [00:24:00] social media, which is grabbing a book now. So I'm like constantly reading during school, which is great.

But I wonder about how you're doing, how. How the state of the world has been affecting your writing, you reach out to me. Which I always love when you reach out to me about your books. I always love both that you reach out to me and that we run into each other randomly in real life. I know.

It's the greatest. I love that the universe keeps smooshing us back together. I know. But talk to me about, about, yeah. 

Laurel: About this book 

Matthew: and where you are. 

Laurel: So it's funny. In all transparency for anyone listening, I reached out to Matthew because I needed a safe space to have this conversation, and he felt like a safe space for me.

So com compliments to Matthew and being like a kind human that I trust. And for being able to be that person in a public way, which is not an easy thing to do. I think but what I reached out originally about was, I said, I don't, I was, I think it was middle of summer and I said I like the book's coming out in September [00:25:00] and I'm supposed to do all the things.

I usually do and I don't know how much listeners know, the degree to which authors do different things, right? Some people, every book they have comes out and they go on a huge tour, and most of the things they're doing are organized and ordained by others. And some people their book comes out and nothing is done.

And they any copies they move or any ads they get or any reviews they get, like that's them doing the work, making it happen. Which can both be very. Difficult and also energizing, like you get, you have to get yourself excited for your book. I sit somewhere at, in the middle of all that I've been on different places on this continuum of sort of promotion and publicity.

But I do a lot of my own work, and especially with the Jewish books, like within my own Jewish community I, a lot of that is me reaching out to a Jewish school or a synagogue or something and saying, can I come, can I do story time? Because it's a wonderful thing when I have a Jewish title to be able to go and be a part of the community.

Sure. And then also to come into secular spaces or non-Jewish spaces and it's a teaching tool, [00:26:00] it's an engagement thing. It is a piece of the diversity conversation, all of that. And I just saw myself this summer as I was getting my early copies, feeling like I just don't, I don't know in this moment how to go out.

And it's it's so complex. It's so hard to explain. It's not as simple as I just don't want anybody to know I'm Jewish. It's not that. Or I don't wanna work in the Jewish community. It was nothing that specific, it was just this overwhelming sense that. After all these difficult years that we've all had pandemic, et cetera.

And then these last two horrific years in Israel and Gaza I wander around social media's a very difficult space for those conversations. And I wander around trying to figure out how to walk this line that is, we need Jewish joy, we need to celebrate. Everybody needs to celebrate all the things that make them happy, right?

We all need to find the pieces of our story that we can lean into that make us feel good about [00:27:00] ourselves. At the same time, the Jewish community has been a complicated place and and while it is true that I will want to celebrate all the Jewish joy, the minute you walk into secular spaces and present in a way that centers a Jewish voice, that feels complicated.

And if you are somebody who has maybe not always agreed with all of the sort of mainstream Jewish voices, it is sometimes hard to walk into Jewish spaces with your full, authentic self. And that I'm somebody who grew up, I sit in this very strange middle space around everything that's happened these last two years.

In that I am a proud, happy Jew who loves her community and her tradition. And I was not raised in a home where Israel was at the center of my Jewish identity. And I have friends in Israel. I actually lived in Israel at one point. But have been very critical of the Israeli government for a very long [00:28:00] time, and have actually been doing protests for Gaza for a long before October 7th.

And figuring out, again, it's not to say that we, I, some somebody's going to hear this and they're going to hear it as I just wanna do, avoid it all. And it's not as simple as that. It's a question of how do I go into these spaces? It's the same. You know that feeling when somebody says to you these days, how are you doing?

And before you can, you've had a good day, but you're afraid to be like, I had a great day. Yeah. Because everything's terrible. And so you feel like you have to say 

Matthew: at whose expense did you have a good day, Laurel? Yeah. 

Laurel: Like the world is terrible. And also I had a good day. I understand. And so I feel like it's that process of.

Wanting to move into the Jewish community and celebrate this holiday with this book that I've made that I worked so hard on that I love so much, and with this beautiful artwork that Leanne contributed that she loves like it. I wanna be able to do that. And also, I'm not somebody who's good at walking into any room and not bringing all the layers of myself.

It's like almost to, to an embarrassing degree. [00:29:00] And that, and so I just, it just felt like you were a place. So the point is, it was this summer and they were saying like, what do you wanna do with the book? And I know that I wanna read it to children. And I know that I want to get to go into Jewish spaces and celebrate Hanukkah with them.

And I know that I wanna bring it to non-Jewish spaces and share this beautiful layer of what it is to be a Jewish person in the world. And especially for children to share and say you may celebrate Christmas but this is another thing. And it's different. It's really different.

And in this book it's really different, right? Some Hanukkah books, I think make it feel like it is. Like a one moment celebrate, that sort of and we have all the things tonight. This is a book that sort of spreads it out across the eight days. And anyway so that was all true this summer.

And then as we all know, like things have suddenly very suddenly shifted a little bit with the ceasefire that. Is not a complete ceasefire and it's not satisfactory and doesn't seem to, isn't going to solve all the [00:30:00] problems. That, this week then I felt a little bit different about, about what it feels like to go out as a Jewish woman into the world to talk about things that are Jewish with the communities that may be Jewish or may not be Jewish.

There's an old saying, two Jews, three opinions. Even in an entirely Jewish space where we all love Hanukkah and we're about to celebrate Hanukkah, we may not agree. If we start to have a difficult conversation, we almost definitely won't agree if we start to have a difficult conversation.

Anyway, so I'm, now, I'm rambling, but I really, she had willingness to have me on because it just felt like I couldn't come on and do a podcast like this without acknowledging. That we are in this difficult space and that it's not, this is not just a Hanukkah party and that nothing's nothing's just a Hanukkah party right now.

Matthew: Do you mind that I, if I respond? Yeah, no, please. Because I hear that and I think it's, I think it's beautiful of you to be able to openly share that, the complexities of what you're feeling [00:31:00] it, it makes me reflect in the kid lit space on how, we want to talk about how we wanna write the books for the kids that need them, that need to be represented and the need to be seen and that visibility communicates value and can resonate and can, and help us carry that value.

But I think about two. I don't often hear the conversation around the burden of needing to be that light for others. And I don't mean to directly tie in to the light that we talk about from the menorah, from the window. Yeah. But there is a light connection there. And I think for me, about, I don't have anything published, but I've written an awful lot.

And one day I'll have a book published and one day it might be a queer centering book. And I say that to you now to say. I think about as much as that's a joyous thing to continue to bring that representation into the world, that there's a burden to it. There's a burden to the fact that I need to be a torch bearer [00:32:00] to put a story onto a shelf so that maybe a kid will find it and feel seen and feel valued.

But also, how will I have those conversations? 'cause what I don't want to do is show up and just be like, and if you don't believe in my beliefs that my. Book signing then. This is clearly not the book for you, but rather invite everyone in. But I guess it your, what you are sharing is causing me also to think just of how hard it is to maybe how hard it is to try to be hope for someone else.

Is hard. It's hard to do that and it's hard to,to be strong for others. Yes. Yes. And because certainly everything you said is true. I think part of what's. Maybe this is like at the core of being a writer at all, we could lay aside all the sort of identity layers to be a writer [00:33:00] or a podcaster or a performer of any kind or a like to stand at the front of a room basically is to.

Laurel: On some level, there's just a certain amount of ego that goes with it, right? Sure. No matter how generous we are in Children's Lit, we, the nice thing about children's lit is that we get to feel like it's all about the kids. Like we do have this other goal that like literacy or like all of the things, it does feel like it funnels back to 

Matthew: children, though.

It does 

Laurel: and that's true, but also. To say of all the people in the world who are gonna get to stand at the, who are going to get to share this hope or speak this truth, or say this entertaining, funny, silly story or whatever, pay attention to me is inherently full of ego. Yeah. Like I think that I have something to say, the desire to express it when I sit down in the morning and do my morning pages.

Right when I scribble a little poem and stick it into the drawer, that's 'cause I had an idea I needed to get out. Like I just had a feeling, a thought, but to build your life and your career on speaking to people from a platform [00:34:00] or the pages of a book. And this is, so this is, I'm gonna marry two things.

There's that phenomenon, right? And then there is this other thing, which is I'm representing a community, or I'm speaking to a community, or I like the and that, that specific community thing, right? So I as a person feel like my book is worthy of the ink and the time and the money and other people's attention because I think it's worthwhile.

So there's ego in that. And when you speak for or to a specific community, there is some sense that there's like an exceptionalism to that too. And I feel like those layers are complicated and sometimes, I think a lot of writers and a lot of artists have this problem is I'm uncomfortable with that.

Like of course I've made this thing, I'm proud of it. I wanna share it. And also I feel very uncomfortable claiming that space. And I think that's related to this Hanukkah Jewish thing right now, which is that sometimes it can feel like. When I say you should learn about Judaism, that I'm saying Judaism is exceptional and you [00:35:00] should know it even though it's not your thing.

And I do believe that because I do believe that kids should take in all of the riches of the world. They should learn about all of these things, whether they're gonna love them or hate them or try them or walk away, but like knowledge and exposure and understanding how complicated and.

Multifaceted the world is just part of becoming a human. So like we're all contributing as we share our individual things to having children who understand a complex, layered world. But in the moment when you're standing at that podium or you're sharing that book or whatever, it can also feel like you're like, look at me like we're special over here.

And I just, 

Matthew: I think that made it hard. Laurel, you. I know you to be a person that cares about things. I think we all probably, I hope, care about things. When we write. I hope that and especially care about the way you touch the future when you work with children. That's a phrase we say in education all the time.

And it's quite a privilege too. I get that. But I wonder if in the 20 years that [00:36:00] you've been teaching and writing and teaching writing if you've noticed your writing change or. Again, I'm putting on the context of what's going on in the world now and how it feels different than 20 years ago to me.

Yeah. If you feel like you feel compelled to write with a stronger voice of a message or with a greater hope or love or empathy, are you noticing that your writing is changing or that you are changing and therefore your writing's changing? 

Laurel: I think any artist is always changing and as you change, your work changes for sure.

What I would say about my work is. SI think I am always looking for something new like that is the through line in many ways to my work is that I don't want ever to do. I ha sometimes there are a couple of Charlie and Mouse books, or we're doing a couple of endlessly ever after books. A series is different.

But when I sit down and think what is the next thing I don't ever want to repeat [00:37:00] myself. And so there's a way in which there's just constant change of the constant, right? But my process and my the way I think about my writing, I don't think has changed very much since I was eight years old.

I think I look at the world and there are things that delight me, things that, and sometimes they're sad things, sometimes they're angry things. They're not always delightful in the like. Joyous sense, but they're delightful in that I am puzzled by them or curious about them, or, I think I've discovered something that even if everybody else in the world has already figured it out, I didn't know it until this moment.

And that there's something about that moment of discovery of there's a thing I could, like the Hanukkah book, it's oh, I could do this with Hanukkah. Yeah. Is like just a new, like a new way of seeing the world. Or if I really learned something like, so often writing is the way we often say writing is figuring out what you didn't know.

You knew that. Like the brain is full of all sorts of things that you don't have time to think about, and there's like a meditative quality to writing. You sit down with an idea, you're gonna write, I have a picture book that we just sent out about a house plan. I'm gonna write this book about a house plan.

I'm gonna see what I can [00:38:00] excavate from a house plan. Yeah. It's a creative search. It's a journey. That process has not changed since I was eight years old. I see something new and then I try to figure it out, and if I can, I make something beautiful, what I think is beautiful out of it.

And so that process has not changed at all. What goes out into the world, what gets published or what I might even consider showing to another human being that has been affected by the world and okay. There are definitely things. I am very much an author who's indebted to the past, and as we have learned, and I mean as we've all grown in recent decades some of the things that delighted me in the past.

I don't want children to see any longer. Like they're not, I don't think they're useful or helpful. Now, some, there's some things that I would share that I think not everybody would, but there are definitely things when I look at old work where I think, oh, thank goodness this didn't get published.

Just because we're all growing and learning all the time, yeah. Okay. So there are definitely things. There are definitely things in any [00:39:00] book as I'm sculpting it, as I'm revising it, as I'm thinking about what would, what will meet this moment the best. It may not be my original. I like my original spark may have to be sculpted to feel like, and it's not about a market.

I don't need to find 48 million readers but I need to know that I can, I need to be able to imagine the kid that would really want the book right. One reader. And if I can think of the one reader that would really want the book, who is basically myself when I was a little kid if I think that little Laurel would be happy with this book in this moment, then I want it out in the world.

I do not feel message driven. And it's an interesting thing. I have a picture book coming out with Lewin Fam in the spring that in my head was just a fairytale. And looking at the marketing materials, it's, they're, it's very much a, an SEL L book. Okay. Like they're selling it as like a way to deal with anxiety basically.

Yeah. And, which is great. Which is fine. Lots of kids have anxiety now, like that's an important thing. But that's not the book I wrote. The book I wrote was just a fairytale about a little girl who shrinks when she gets scared. That [00:40:00] was what delighted me. Was that idea not that I was going to like heal children.

I don't think if I, and this isn't true for everybody probably, but if I tried to write books to heal children, they would not be good books. That's a really interesting reflection to lean into your delight, but that if you tried to be more. Didactic or message driven or whatever, that it just wouldn't work.

Matthew: What a great, I dunno. That I know very much. 

Laurel: Like I don't, no, I, that's, I seriously, like That's not true. That's not true. No. I have lots of creative and like I have lots of instincts. I'm always in conversation with everything, i'm never done I've never figured out what I'm going to figure out.

It is always. Like I'm like on step four of the journey I'm on always. I can appreciate that. Yeah. In order to tell somebody something, you have to actually have decided it's like a finished product of an idea. Yeah. And I just, I dunno what to say about anxiety to say about the world today. I am.

That's good. I am engaging with it and I hope it wants to engage with me. 

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I, [00:41:00] before we stop recording, I just need to tell you that I. There's a book of yours. There's a lot of books of yours that I've I come back to, but my goodness, I come back to Hungry Gym. I've been in, I think, oh, thank you four other schools since we last talked about that book.

And I have purchased it for every single school and read it to every group of kids that I've had. Oh, makes me so happy. 

Laurel: I love that book. Yeah. But here's the point. So Hungry Jam, I just found out is going out of print. Okay. Which makes me super sad. Yeah. Yeah. And I just ordered a bunch of copies, so if you want some more copies, I can get them for two bucks a piece.

Oh, cool. I'll give you a whole box of Hungry Jim. But but that's the exactly I wrote Hungry Jim thinking, no way is anyone gonna publish this thing. A and then I was really lucky to find an editor who published it for the. The one teacher, the one librarian who really wants to share it with lots of kids, right?

Oh 

Matthew: yeah. It's so Maury Sandeck good. It's never thought it was 

Laurel: gonna be a, we never thought it was gonna be a bestseller. Okay, like you can't. You can't make art. Yeah. Try and make everybody happy, 

Matthew: yeah. I can tell you it, it has made [00:42:00] hundreds of people happy, very little people. That makes me so happy.

Hundreds and hundreds of little people happy. I love that. And that's great. Oh, that's so great. And it'll live on, it'll live on, in on the shelves of libraries. Laura, why don't we end by bringing you back to my library? But I'll ask you a question. I've asked you a bunch. I'll see a library full of children tomorrow morning.

Is there a message that I can bring to them from you? 

Laurel: Yeah. I thought, I've thought about this and thought about this, knowing that I was gonna talk to you and I, it's like I waffle back and forth between two things that probably aren't useful and I think what I'm it is, it's like I'm really talking to myself that like the two impulses I have in the world right now are.

Tell the truth and take a breath. And I think that both of those things they don't really seem to go together. But I feel like those are the two things that I feel like I'm per perpetually trying to do right now is tell the truth and take a breath. And they're both sometimes really hard lately.[00:43:00]