Sydney Taylor Award | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Book Review: The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Inkyard Press, 2021

ISBN-13: ‎978-1335402509

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Wow. Polydoros set out to write a work of historical fantasy about Jews and Judaism not set during the Holocaust, and was inspired by an article about H.H. Holmes to set his story among Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Alter, the main character, was ill as a baby and named to avoid the notice of the Angel of Death, but people around him frequently die. Alter is also gay, but in denial and ashamed. He is in love with his roommate Yakov, who leaves to meet someone and is found drowned the next day, the most recent of several Jewish boys who are dead or missing.

Alter, a member of the burial society, is helping immerse Yakov in the mikveh when he thinks he sees Yakov move, and jumps in the mikveh to pull the body out. Instead, he is possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk (a dybbuk is a malicious spirit, usually the dislocated soul of a dead person with unfinished business). Alter’s only choices to save his own soul are either0 to exorcise the dybbuk or to find Yakov’s killer and exact revenge. Luckily, he has the help of Raizel, a unionist working for an anarchist newspaper (the local matchmaker keeps trying to hook them up), and Frankie, an ambitious Russian Jewish teenage criminal and boxer who heads a gang of thieves.

This is such a layered, detailed story, both in the integration of the various aspects of Jewish culture and the Eastern European immigrant experience, and the vividness of the Chicago and World’s Fair setting. In addition, it really reveals the viciousness of antisemitism in this country and how it also traveled from overseas. I think people don’t really think about how insidious and common it was. It’s truly a Jewish horror story, and there aren’t too many of those around. I’m so impressed with the research and writing on some very difficult-to-address topics.

The City Beautiful won the 2022 Sydney Taylor Award and was a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the 2021 National Jewish Book Award, and the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Toung Adult Novels. The attention is well-deserved.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Book Review: Gershon’s Monster: A Story for the Jewish New Year, retold by Eric A. Kimmel, illustrated by Jon J. Muth

Gershon’s Monster: A Story for the Jewish New Year, retold by Eric A. Kimmel and illustrated by Jon J. Muth.

Scholastic, 2000

ISBN-13: 978-0439108393

Available: Hardcover, paperback

Gershon’s Monster is based on a story from the Hasidic tradition of Judaism, retold by Eric Kimmel, also the author of Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. Gershon is a man who never regrets or apologizes for his mistakes. Every week he sweeps them into his basement where he won’t have to see them, and once a year, on Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year, he gathers them into a sack, carries them down to the ocean, and empties them in.

Gershon and his wife desperately want a child, and Gershon visits a great rabbi for advice. The rabbi’s prayers are successful, but he warns Gershon that his selfishness will eventually cost the lives of his children, as the sea will claim them as payment for washing away his errors. Gershon ignores the rabbi’s warning, but one day as his children are playing near the water, a monster rises from the sea, created from years and years of Gershon’s misdeeds. To save his children, Gershon must act selflessly, and acknowledge and repent his errors.

What could have been a simple, well-done retelling of a Hasidic folktale on the wisdom of making amends (the author’s note says he is a stand-in for the mystic Ba’al Shem Tov, a great rabbi who lived in the 1700s). takes on extraordinary power with the illustrations of Jon J. Muth. While the art for most of the story is light and delicate, darker browns and golds illuminate Gershon’s visit with the prophetic rabbi, with grays and blacks dominating the scenes where Gershon’s selfishness is most obvious. The page where Gershon leaves the rabbi is framed in gray, with the sad expression of the rabbi in the foreground, but a bright green visible from the doorway, as Gershon once again blithely leaves without dealing with the selfish behavior in his wake. The darkest illustrations are the most dramatic, though. Gershon’s individual mistakes are small, dark shapes that look almost gleeful as they ride alongside him or on top of his sack, set apart from the muted and blurred images by their sharp edges. The monster created by Gershon’s years of errors that he has deposited into the sea is indistinct, blending in with the dark clouds and threatening waves while simultaneously emerging as a gigantic black horror, and turning to that page, even though I knew something terrible would happen, left me momentarily breathless. It really was a “wow” moment. While illustrations such as this could be considered too dark and disturbing for some younger children, most children, Jewish or not, will enjoy the story, and it’s a great jumping off point for a discussion of the importance of making amends, and on the ability to change for the better. With Rosh Hashonah just around the corner, I recommend following it up with a snack of apples and honey.

Gershon’s Monster is a winner of the Sydney Taylor Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries. Highly recommended, especially for libraries in communities with a strong Jewish population.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski