Seventh-grader Caroline Weeks has a Jewish mom and a non-Jewish dad. When Caroline's nana dies around the same time that Caroline's best friend, Rachel, is having her bat mitzvah, Caroline starts to become more interested in her Jewish identity.
I had never heard my grandmother speak like that. The stories she told about her life, about her family, always sounded like stories. Like books at a far end of the shelf, not real I had never heard my grandmother sounds as she did now, like a little girl. p. 116This was a sweet little book. Caroline is sad when her grandmother dies and she receives a Star of David necklace from her. Slowly she begins to explore her Jewish identity as her best friend prepares for her bat mitzvah. She begins to understand the grown-up relationships around her are not as simple as she assumed. She wonders if she has the right to become bat mitzvah because her family is lax about keeping the customs and religious days and her father is not Jewish. But then, with the help of her friends and family, she starts to decide that maybe it is okay to be Jewish and that she has the right to be.
Hogwarts: Muggle Studies
This sounds like a really good plot device for a coming of age type book, since really, that's what a bat/bar mitzveh is supposed to be!
ReplyDelete@J.T. - It was a very sweet story.
ReplyDeleteSounds great. Never heard of the book, but the cover and storyline is good.
ReplyDelete@Nina - It's a short book and an easy read.
ReplyDelete