Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

Bet­sy R. Rosen­thals newest book, Look­ing For Me…In This Great Big Fam­i­ly, was pub­lished in April:

One of 12 sib­lings grow­ing up in depres­sion-era Bal­ti­more, Edith isn’t quite sure of who she is. Between work­ing at her father’s din­er, tak­ing care of her younger sib­lings, and liv­ing in the shad­ow of her more mature sis­ters, Edith feels lost in a sea of sib­lings. When a kind teacher encour­ages Edith to be a teacher her­self one day, Edith sees prospects for a future all her own. Full of joy, pain, humor, and sad­ness, this nov­el in verse is a won­der­ful look at the life of Edith Paul, the author’s moth­er, and is an endur­ing por­trait (com­plete with fam­i­ly pho­tos and an author’s note at the end) of one fam­i­ly’s pur­suit of the Amer­i­can dream. Read­ing lev­el: Age 9 and up.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.