Ilana Kurshan’s new mem­oir, Chil­dren of the Book: A Mem­oir of Read­ing Togeth­er, is a cere­bral mem­oir of both read­ing and moth­er­hood, which should sur­prise no one who’s read the author’s pre­vi­ous work. Kurshan’s first mem­oir, If All the Seas Were Ink, about her learn­ing daf yomi (the ​“dai­ly page” of Tal­mud) after her divorce, also braid­ed schol­ar­ly explo­ration togeth­er with her every­day life. She makes no secret that books and read­ing are cen­tral to her exis­tence, and her newest mem­oir shows that she hasn’t let moth­er­hood inter­fere much with her read­ing — in fact, it has enriched the experience

In the book’s intro­duc­tion, Kur­shan gives the read­er an idea of her read­ing life with her kids and what the over­all scope of her mem­oir is: ​“The sto­ry of my life has become not just the sto­ry of the books I am read­ing but also the sto­ry of the books I read with my chil­dren, and reen­counter through their eyes.” Indeed, her mem­oir explores the books she reads with her chil­dren and the lessons they learn, but she ties her family’s read­ing life into some­thing big­ger as well — that of Torah. Just as each time we read the Torah cycle, we get new insights and lessons, time has giv­en Kur­shan new ways of see­ing her chil­dren through their literature. 

The mem­oir is bro­ken down into five parts that cor­re­spond with the five books of the Torah. Part 1 (Gen­e­sis) is about the start of her children’s read­ing lives; part 2 (Exo­dus) explores inde­pen­dent read­ing; part 3 (Leviti­cus) looks at the Taber­na­cle as a sort of metaphor for the library; part 4 (Num­bers) is about her family’s jour­ney through COVID times, and part 5 (Deuteron­o­my) looks at auto­bi­og­ra­phy and telling our own sto­ries. If this sounds intense, it is. While she writes about Beezus and Ramona and Ivy and Bean, Kur­shan also sprin­kles in bib­li­cal terms and lessons, as well as rab­binic thought. Kur­shan begins each part of the book with a brief sum­ma­ry that ties in the spe­cif­ic book of the Bible and its main ideas/​events with themes in her children’s reading. 

Kur­shan is a won­der­ful­ly obser­vant writer and an equal­ly astute Juda­ic schol­ar. Jux­ta­pos­ing the jour­ney of read­ing with her chil­dren with the pro­gres­sion of the books of the Torah is a big under­tak­ing, and at times it feels a bit over­whelm­ing to read. But Kurshan’s smart and some­times unex­pect­ed sense of humor keeps the read­er engaged. Books are a life­line for Kur­shan, and this mem­oir can be seen as a love let­ter to read­ing, as well as to her kids. As Kur­shan writes, ​“It is a sto­ry about the sacred spaces we cre­ate when we con­nect with our chil­dren over what is most impor­tant to us.” 

And indeed, Kur­shan has made her home a sacred space.