Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop by Joshua S. Levy Middle School    Tegen/HarperCollins    256 pp.5/24    9780063248243    $18.99e-book ed.  9780063248267    $8.99Finn and Ezra, both thirteen, are destined to relive their bar mitzvah weekends, from Friday through Sunday afternoon, countless times. While their overlapping plights initially seem coincidental, as they progress...

On All Other Nights: A Passover Celebration in 14 Stories edited by Chris Baron, Joshua S. Levy, and Naomi Milliner; illus. by Shannon HochmanIntermediate, Middle School    Amulet/Abrams    304 pp.3/24    9781419767296    $18.99e-book ed.  9781647009779    $17.09In this collection of fourteen Passover-themed tales by different authors—Laurel Snyder, Adam Gidwitz, Veera Hiranandani, among others—one...

About six weeks into our collective social distancing/parent schooling experiment, I went to the shelf to pick out a few picture books for my first grader to read independently. I found myself rejecting book after book: too much about school, too many friends playing together, too much excitement outside the...

I’ve been writing reviews for The Horn Book Guide since 2005, long before my daughter was born in 2011. When I first started, the reviews were a hypothetical glimpse into what I thought would appeal to children. I was in and out of classrooms during those early years, sometimes sharing...