Golemcrafters

Gr 5 Up–When siblings Faye and Shiloh receive a mysterious gift of clay from their paternal grandfather, their lives take on a new twist. They learn about their family’s ability to craft golems, leading them to travel to a parallel past confronting anti-Semitism throughout points in Jewish history and the present. Faye never feels like she fits in—being biracial, she’s not Japanese “enough” for her friends and doesn’t excel in school like Shiloh. When Faye and Shiloh accompany their grandfather to New York City to learn golem crafting, Faye is the one with the natural aptitude for it. When the two siblings start learning the family craft, they awake each night in what seems like a fantasy land, and the people speak their made-up language, a mash of Hebrew and Japanese. They soon learn that this is no feel-good adventure story, but that they are somehow traveling back to tumultuous times of persecution and war. This is an engaging, multicultural novel that blends themes of identity, religion, and belonging with a touch of magic and Jewish mythology.