What’s the scoop on pub­lish­ing? What Jew­ish books are agents, edi­tors, and pub­lish­ers espe­cial­ly excit­ed for us to read? JBC’s series Book­Watch is here to answer these fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions. Each month, a pub­lish­ing insid­er writes an email to intro­duce them­selves, give us a behind-the-scenes look at their work, and tell us about forth­com­ing Jew­ish books they can’t wait to ush­er into the world.

You don’t have to have read Dara Horn to under­stand the dark humor of the phrase ​“Peo­ple love dead Jews.” You just have to be a read­er long­ing for sto­ries that reflect the com­plex real­i­ty of liv­ing as a con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish per­son. If, like me, you were a gay Jew­ish per­son grow­ing up in the six­ties and sev­en­ties, you were, as they say, ​“twice blessed” with a lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Dur­ing my youth, books fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters who were gay and lived to tell about it were prac­ti­cal­ly nonex­is­tent. And there were almost as few sto­ries in which Jews active­ly engaged with their reli­gion. If they did, it was most like­ly a dead­ly one, fea­tur­ing Nazis.

With­in cor­po­rate pub­lish­ing it’s dif­fi­cult to break through long-stand­ing (and rarely exam­ined) assump­tions about a book’s poten­tial audi­ence. Until the col­lec­tion Am I Blue? by Mar­i­on Dane Bauer broke through to sell tens of thou­sands of copies, no acquir­ing edi­tor had a ​“comp” with which to con­vince a reluc­tant, pre­dic­tion-con­ser­v­a­tive sales force that they could sell a suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ty of books with LGBTQ+ peo­ple in them in order to meet a cor­po­rate bot­tom line. Through the ​’90s (and even today, I’d guess) the same prob­lem held for Jew­ish Books — with the excep­tion of Holo­caust (and on the rare occa­sion Hanukkah) books. A love­ly book about a girl solv­ing a mys­tery at a Jew­ish sum­mer camp was repeat­ed­ly rebuffed by an acqui­si­tions com­mit­tee. I pushed through a gor­geous trans­la­tion of a Nor­we­gian love sto­ry set dur­ing World War II — but was asked to put more swastikas, big­ger ones, on the cov­er. ​’Cause that would SELL.

Hence the preva­lence of the ​“Sin­gle Sto­ry” in Jew­ish books for young peo­ple. Judg­ing from the lit­er­a­ture avail­able, you’d think that Jews were uni­form­ly Ashke­nazi. And dead. (If you want to know how destruc­tive this can be to a writer’s imag­i­na­tion, ask me about the dif­fi­cul­ty I had cap­tur­ing my own mother’s voice sub­tly and accu­rate­ly in Pearl Moscowitz’s Last Strand.)

When I found­ed Levine Queri­do, I want­ed to chal­lenge the ​“sin­gle sto­ry” that was avail­able to so many peo­ple. Not just Slav­ery. Not just Oppres­sion. Not just the holo­caust. All  of our stories.

Our Vision

So I seek vari­ety, humor, nuance and a gen­er­ous, deter­mined embrace of unlim­it­ed source mate­r­i­al for all our books. We Jews are part of this whole wide world and its his­to­ry, not only in the month of Decem­ber, or dur­ing the years 1939 – 1945.

Joy­ful Song by Leslea New­man and Susan Gal is a gor­geous exam­ple of this. A young boy (in a col­or­ful, con­tem­po­rary South­ern Cal­i­for­nia neigh­bor­hood) is walk­ing to shul with his moms for his new baby sister’s nam­ing cer­e­mo­ny. As they encounter neigh­bors one by one, Zachary almost slips and announces the baby’s name too soon. But his moms play­ful­ly inter­vene, and a bois­ter­ous, exu­ber­ant parade of well wish­ers accu­mu­lates on the way to shul for the denouement. 

New and Estab­lished Voices

LQ intro­duced Mari Lowe to audi­ences in the spring of 2022 with Avi­va vs. the Dyb­buk, a book about a griev­ing girl and her strug­gling moth­er in a con­tem­po­rary Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ty. (And no, she isn’t ​“flee­ing” the com­mu­ni­ty, as anoth­er sin­gle sto­ry might have it.) Avi­va vs. the Dyb­buk won the Syd­ney Tay­lor Award, as did Mari’s sec­ond book, The Dubi­ous Pranks of Shaindy Good­man—which was also the recip­i­ent of a Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award! 

This sea­son, we’re stoked for Mar­i’s Beinoni, a mid­dle-grade fan­ta­sy adven­ture that weaves Jew­ish mys­ti­cism into a dynam­ic new mag­ic sys­tem and a hero­ic quest. The book fol­lows Ezra, who believes he’s the Nivchar — the cho­sen one — who, on the day of his bar mitz­vah, will fight a bat­tle that will deter­mine whether peace­ful, bland Beinoni time con­tin­ues or gives way to vio­lence and uncer­tain­ty. The sto­ry asks ques­tions about bal­ance, respon­si­bil­i­ty, and what it means to grow up in an uncer­tain world while stak­ing the claim that Jew­ish tra­di­tion can under­pin inven­tive and excit­ing fantasy.

In the fall of 2022, we intro­duced a writer we feel was an inher­i­tor of the lega­cies of Chaim Potok and Sholom Ale­ichem: Sacha Lamb. Sacha’s debut nov­el, When the Angels Left the Old Coun­try (about an angel and a demon who go on a quest to res­cue Jew­ish immi­grants) won the Syd­ney Tay­lor award and the Stonewall Award and a Printz hon­or — a won­der­ful trio of recog­ni­tion that attests to the range a Jew­ish book and author can aspire to. Lamb’s sopho­more nov­el, The For­bid­den Book, was just announced as the win­ner of the New Eng­land Bookseller’s award, fur­ther estab­lish­ing Lamb as one of the great tal­ents of our time.

Then there’s Abby White’s debut YA nov­el,D. J. Rosen­blum Becomes the G. O. A. T., which tack­les grief, fam­i­ly, and iden­ti­ty through a young woman inves­ti­gat­ing her cousin Rachel’s death as the only one con­vinced it was foul play. Abby has craft­ed what edi­tor Irene Vazquez describes as ​“a bowl of mat­zo ball soup dumplings for any­one learn­ing to chart their own path, nav­i­gate new friend­ships and crush­es, and fig­ure out how to love — and live — after loss.”

Not every Jew­ish sto­ry we pub­lish explic­it­ly cen­ters on Jew­ish themes even if it is writ­ten by Jew­ish writ­ers, and I think that’s impor­tant, too. The Bark­ing Pup­py, based on author Lori Loben­stine’s real-life expe­ri­ence, tells the heart­warm­ing sto­ry of a bira­cial girl, her ador­ing god­moth­er, and the first ​“by dogs, for dogs” news­pa­per. The sto­ry is set out­side of Boston. It’s about friend­ship, com­mu­ni­ty, and the pow­er of cre­ativ­i­ty — val­ues that res­onate deeply with­in Jew­ish tra­di­tion, even when they’re not explic­it­ly Jew­ish stories.

Look­ing Ahead

I has­ten to add that we do hon­or the lega­cy and impor­tance of the Holo­caust, espe­cial­ly when we rec­og­nize a sto­ry that may not be famil­iar to read­ers. In spring 2026, we’re pub­lish­ing The Not So Qui­et Life of Mar­cel Marceau, a pic­ture book that tells of Marceau’s ear­ly life as a sen­si­tive French-Jew­ish boy endur­ing Nazi per­se­cu­tion and how he became the famous mime we all know. Coau­thored by Jenn Bai­ley and Sher­ry Bushue, it’s illus­trat­ed — lus­cious­ly — by two-time Calde­cott hon­oree Pamela Zagaren­s­ki, and might be her best book yet.

My goal — our goal at Levine Queri­do—is that read­ers of all ages and all walks of life will find a rous­ing and emo­tion­al­ly res­o­nant sto­ry from our cat­a­logue. Because that’s what it’s all about for me. Find­ing sto­ries that, in their speci­fici­ty, speak to the universal.

Jews — with our rich tra­di­tion of sto­ry­telling, our com­plex rela­tion­ship with his­to­ry, and our deep engage­ment with ques­tions of iden­ti­ty and belong­ing — have some­thing essen­tial to offer read­ers of all back­grounds. At Levine Queri­do, I’m not just pub­lish­ing Jew­ish books; I’m cre­at­ing a space where Jew­ish cre­ativ­i­ty can flour­ish in all its forms, con­tribut­ing to a broad­er lit­er­ary con­ver­sa­tion that hon­ors both tra­di­tion and innovation.