A DARING RESCUE:

HOW KING CHRISTIAN X AND HIS PEOPLE SAVED DENMARK'S JEWS

 

Denmark’s King Christian courageously and cleverly defied Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws to protect his Jewish subjects. His example inspired his people to risk everything to save their Jewish countrymen in this fast-paced story about their death-defying, secret nationwide effort—a nation of heroes! Alone among the nations invaded by Germany, Denmark proved that anyone can—and should—fight back against persecution. 

 

My nonfiction picture book, A DARING RESCUE: HOW KING CHRISTIAN X AND HIS PEOPLE SAVED DENMARK'S JEWS (WC 538 plus Back Matter, ages 5–9), tells the story of how King Christian and the people of Denmark saved all but 1% of Denmark’s Jewish population during World War II. It would sit on the shelf alongside NICKY AND VERA: A QUIET HERO OF THE HOLOCAUST AND THE CHILDREN HE RESCUED (Peter Sis, 2021) or HIDDEN HOPE: HOW A TOY AND A HERO SAVED LIVES DURING THE HOLOCAUST (Elisa Boxer, 2023). Both these hopeful Holocaust stories feature heroes like King Christian. But since only in Denmark did the whole nation come together to rescue the Jews, that dimension is necessarily absent from those books.

 

October 2023 was the 80th anniversary of Denmark’s boatlift. I profoundly hope that showing children a path for action will ensure that history will not repeat itself. This forgotten history is especially timely now.

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THE MATZO BALL THANKSGIVING

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When Bubbie tells granddaughter Honey that she misses matzo ball soup, Honey and an increasingly numerous crew of cousins make it for her—on Thanksgiving, so Bubbie doesn’t have to wait until Passover. With extra eggshell here and extra parsley there, the soup doesn’t turn out exactly as expected, but Bubbie’s reaction proves it’s not the perfection of the product but the love that went into it that warms her heart.

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THE MATZO BALL THANKSGIVING begins where THANK YOU, OMU! (Oge Mora, 2018) ends, with a motley crew working together to reward a generous older woman with their own generosity. While the grandchildren in HOW TO LOVE A GRANDMA (Jean Reagan, 2023) also make love offerings, those grandchildren are unrelated—whereas Honey and her cousins are all one family.

 

 

AND THAT’S NOT ALL! SAID SALLY SMALL

 

Sally doesn’t understand why Paul teases her for being short. She can squeeze into the smallest spaces, she can turn anything into a ladder, and she never loses at limbo. AND THAT’S NOT ALL! Sally wins over tall Paul through her humor and helps him see himself differently—after all, it’s also terrific to be tall.  Without ever mentioning bullying, Sally shows kids how to be confident.

 

AND THAT’S NOT ALL! SAID SALLY SMALL is a 537-word character-driven, comic celebration showing that self-love comes in all sizes. Sally can sit on the same shelf as NOT LITTLE (Maya Myers, 2021). But whereas its diminutive heroine stands up for the new boy against a bully, Sally stands up for herself through her humor and teaches the new kid how to defend himself, turning her lone detractor into her best friend. 

 

 

SAVING LIVES WITH BEEHIVES: 

HOW SCIENTISTS SAVE ELEPHANTS WITH A LITTLE BUZZ

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Grandmother Elephant and her family are munching their way into mortal peril. As new farms sprawl across age-old migration routes, elephants are increasingly in danger from the farmers whose crops they eat. But zoologists found a solution to this problem: they use elephants’ natural fear of bees to protect the pachyderms. Creatively using that fear, the scientists invented beehive fences to save the elephants.  Via beehive fences, elephants’ fear of bees is now saving crop-raiding elephants from angry farmers in twenty countries in Africa and Asia — a success story widely covered by international media.

 

SAVING LIVES WITH BEEHIVES (WC 973 plus back matter) is a nonfiction picture book for 7–10 year olds. It shares the problem/solution structure of Pincus’s MAKE WAY FOR ANIMALS!: A WORLD OF WILDLIFE CROSSINGS (2022) and the hope and ingenuity of Turere and Pollock’s LION LIGHTS: MY INVENTION THAT MADE PEACE WITH LIONS (2022).

 

 

THE ROOSTER SHOT

 

When Alex mishears Mama say he’s getting a ROOSTER shot instead of a BOOSTER shot, he hopes it will make him less chicken—and he thinks it is turning him into a rooster. He sprouts a beak (particularly helpful for cracking sunflower seeds), roosts on his bunk bed, and crows in the morning. Just when he realizes his newfound courage isn’t due to the shot, a wordless twist ending launches an entirely new misunderstanding.

 

THE ROOSTER SHOT is a 440-word picture book about how a child’s fears can run away with him. A cross between the misheard word like in INTERRUPTING CHICKEN AND THE ELEPHANT OFSURPRISE (David Ezra Stein, 2021) and the physical changes of Imogene in IMOGENE COMES BACK! (David Small, 2020), I hope THE ROOSTER SHOT will appeal to every five-year-old’s funny bone.

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KIBOKO AND THE HIPPO POOL

 

Like all hippos, baby Kiboko and his Mama stay submerged in their home pool by day and leave the water to graze by night. They need to return before "the sun lifts his head above the thorn trees" so their skin doesn't dry and crack. But one night, they wander too far and must survive climate-caused drought — and scary bull hippos — to make it safely home.

 

Based on an event I witnessed in Tanzania, KIBOKO AND THE HIPPO POOL (NF, 564 words) is a lyrical story of fortitude and longing for home, while nodding to the impact of climate change on hippos.

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KIBOKO shares the first person narration and courage of Sy Montgomery’s BRAVE BABY HUMMINGBIRD (2024) and the desire of Erin Guendelsberger’s INKY THE OCTOPUS: THE OFFICIAL STORY OF ONE BRAVE OCTOPUS’ DARING ESCAPE (2018) to get back to his home in the natural world. 

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NINA HYENA! TAKE A NAP!

 

If Mama hyena can’t get wide-awake Nina Hyena to nap, she can’t hunt and they’ll both go hungry. This lyrical true story reads like fiction.

 

A cross between the spunky determined naplessness of Annalise Devin McFleece in Grabenstein’s No More Naps! and the lyricism of the Helen Frost/Rick Lieder books about the natural world like Hello, I’m Here!, NINA HYENA! tells its true story of the little hyena who wouldn’t nap via real animal behaviors—like a Disney nature movie.

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AN EDUCATION FOR DOVED: 

FROM THE OLD COUNTRY TO THE NEW

 

Doved’s family isn’t like others in the village. They speak Yiddish, observe Shabbos—and suffer persecution. For Doved, family and education are everything, so he is bereft when his Tatti sails to safety in the Golden Land. Four years later, Tatti sends for his son—but Doved must go to work instead of school. He defers his education dreams until his family is reunited and he comes up with an ingenious solution to achieve his academic goals. My family's immigration story, like millions of others, is a saga of love, persistence, and the American Dream.

 

My nonfiction picture book, AN EDUCATION FOR DOVED: FROM THE OLD COUNTRY TO THE NEW (WC 642 plus Back Matter), would sit on the shelf alongside GITTEL’S JOURNEY: AN ELLIS ISLAND STORY (Lesléa Newman, 2019) and PAPER SON: THE INSPIRING STORY OF TYRUS WONG, IMMIGRANT AND ARTIST (Julie Leung, 2019).