Jewish mythology has it that when God created the universe, one corner of it was left unfinished. Opinion is divided on why, but everyone agrees that the Unfinished Corner is a dangerous place full of monsters. Twelve-year-old Miriam neither knows nor cares about the Unfinished Corner. She’s too busy preparing for her Bat Mitzvah, wrestling with whether she even wants to be Jewish – until a peculiar angel appears, whisking her, her two best friends, and her worst frenemy off to this monstrous land with one mission: finish the Unfinished Corner. An original graphic novel.

The Unfinished Corner
Discussion Questions
A graphic novel filled with kid-centric humor, high adventure, and weird, creepy, apocryphal stories and characters from the Bible and rabbinic literature, The Unfinished Corner is definitely not like any other book in the standard Jewish children’s library. While preparing for her bat mitzvah, twelve year-old Miri is unexpectedly yanked into a quest that hops between the physical and spiritual worlds, along with three friends — well, classmates — well, frenemies — each with their own problems, and each with their own reasons for needing a trans-dimensional quest.
The Unfinished Corner contains strong female characters, diverse depictions of Jews (observant, indifferent, and wrestling-with-it!) (Jews of color and from different countries and social classes!). The narrative moves breathlessly, always giving the reader a lot to think about, and never reducing its characters to stereotypes or resorting to simple answers. The demons aren’t evil, and the ordered universe isn’t necessarily always ordered in the right way. Beyond its well-researched scriptural source material, there’s a lot of heart to this story, and it mirrors the preteen struggle toward understanding — and taking to heart — the rich and unabashedly weird heritage of Jewish stories.

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