GOLEMCRAFTERS, fascinating middle-grade fantasy about identity and acceptance

GOLEMCRAFTERS
EMI WATANABE COHEN
Levine Querido (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5 of five

The Publisher Says: Emi Watanabe Cohen’s sophomore novel travels from the most awkward surface tensions to the beautiful depths of Jewish culture and lore for a tale of magical and emotional discovery.

On the same day Faye's brother comes home with a black eye, a package arrives from a relative they have never met. It's a slab of clay: some weird kind of bar mitzvah present?

The strange gift turns out to be an invitation to learn a craft that has been in their family for centuries. And it's not pottery.

Faye and Shiloh are driven to New York City by their grandfather for a spring break filled with magical instruction. But at night, they find themselves transported to a strange parallel world, where groups of innocent people are facing appalling hatred and violence. Are Faye and Shiloh destined to defend them?

How is that possible for a brainy, unpopular eleven-year-old and her vulnerable older brother?

It will take all the strength they can draw from their Jewish and Japanese heritage to not only crack the mystery of this alternate world but to find the power in them to confront the troubles of their present.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Fascinating remix of the well-known, always interesting, legend of the Golem. Imagine being Othered twice over: Japanese and Jewish so too Jewish for the Asian crowd, too not-Jewish for the Jews. The bullying, the name-calling, all terrible enough in middle school, get that much worse!

Shiloh comes home after being roughed up by bullies at school...at no time in the narrative do we see kids more than glancingly interact with their parents, which I recall tracks well with middle school behavior...to find his last bar mitzvah present waiting for him. It's from his father's father, whom he's never met, so of course he's intensely curious about it. It's decided, after it gets opened to reveal it's a big lump of clay, that the kids will go spend the summer coming up with their Zeyde, there to learn the family secret trade of golemcrafting...a trade I'd *literally*never*considered might exist, even in a fantasy world.

In this summer of learning about Zeyde, about their ethnic history, about magic and its workings, there's a fair old bit of Jewish historical trauma. Here's what I say to parents who think their children can't, or shouldn't, be exposed to traumatic historical facts: If they've ever watched the news at all, they already know the worst of what people can do to each other in god's name. Teach them, or let them learn about if you can't do it yourself, the history of how hate for the Other has warped and perverted societies. They'll know what to look out for if they've seen it before they can fall into it.

The author's unique heritage, like Shiloh and Faye's, is part of the reason she should bet trusted to tell your middle-grader about this blended identity, its struggles, and its rich rewards. Even if your child is not either of these ethnicities, this novel is a delightful fantasy work about a stern old mage teaching bumptious apprentices the whys, hows, and don'ts of magic. I've never met a middle-grader (look at the name, forevermore!) who didn't feel that awkward neither fish nor fowl unbelonging. This novel will give the reader of most all ages the strong sense of being seen in their social awkwardness.

As there is a lot of violence dealt with, discussed, but not shown directly, so as to make the middle-grade designation fit comfortably. There is also a very...pat...ending. I'm not sure I'd expect a fourteen-year-old not to complain about the kid-book vibe this presents, so be aware before gifting it up.

A solid performance from a writer gifted in making the tough parts feel manageable.

THE FORBIDDEN BOOK, Sacha Lamb's sophmore Jewish fantasy novel

THE FORBIDDEN BOOK
SACHA LAMB
Levine Querido (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$10.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Dybbuks.
Illegal printing.
A genderqueer lesbian with a knife.
Set against a backdrop of literary censorship and growing Jewish political consciousness, Sydney Taylor and Stonewall award-winning Sacha Lamb's sophomore novel is a soaring exploration of identity, survival, and ultimately, hope.

On the night before her wedding, 17-year-old Sorel leaps from a window and runs away from her life. To keep from being discovered, she takes on the male identity of Isser Jacobs—but it soon becomes clear that there is a real Isser Jacobs, and people want him dead. Her mistaken identity takes Sorel into the dark underworld of her small city in the Pale of Settlement, where smugglers, forgers, and wicked angels fight for control of the Jewish community. In order to make it out, Sorel must discover who Isser Jacobs really is—and who she wants to be.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sorel, a lesbian about to be forcibly married to a man, decides that, on balance, she'd rather not, jumps out her window and desperately hunts down a new way to live her life.

Supernatural and political hijinks ensue.

Well? What's the hold-up? Have you one-clicked yet? Just go get the blessèd thing already! You need a chuckle or two, and a high-stakes plot to keep you flippin' the pages. Absent the very interesting and unfamiliar-to-me cast of Jewish folkloric creatures of majgickq, this might have been three-and-a-half stars; the dybbuk alone crests over the four line and we're not even into the head of a woman who so absolutely rejects her cultural and societal repressions across multiple axes; repression SO INIMICAL TO HER that she does the extreme thing of becoming something and someone she chooses for herself. That this happens to land her in deep waters she'd never so much as heard of before made me root for her even harder.

Lesbian or not, give this book to every tween girl you know. More particularly the ones being raised in repessive god-ridden hate cults. Sorel, whose one flaw as a character that I found a bit itchy is that she springs out that window as herself and remains unchanged by the end of the story, is an archetype I wish more young women saw themselves in. (This is also why my stars stop at four.) She is not deeply shaded, but brightly, loudly limned. This kind of person is exciting to meet, often difficult to know well; still more often than that, troublesome.

We badly need that kind of woman in 2025.

Grow a few more, gift this amusing, edifying look into the magical corners of Jewishness widely.