”A poignant story of bravery, sacrifice, and love. The Crystal Beads: Lalka's Journey teaches the history of hidden children of the Holocaust, evokes compassion through beautiful language and illustration, and leads readers to consider what connects rather than divides us from one another.“
—Jennifer Rosner, author of The Yellow Bird Sings

“The Crystal Beads beautifully highlights empathy and compassion. Themes, which as an educator, I consider to be the core components in teaching students about the Holocaust.”
—Sandra Roberts, Whitwell Middle School, Whitwell, Tennessee, The Children’s Holocaust Memorial/The Paper Clip Project

Kirkus Review, author appearances, library campaign, partnerships with Jewish organizations

The Crystal Beads, Lalka’s Journey will be presented to the Jewish Book Council’s 120 member organizations for inclusion in the 2022-2023 cohort of titles.

The JBC Net­work — with rough­ly 120 mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions across North Amer­i­ca, includ­ing JCCs, syn­a­gogues, Hil­lels, Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tions, and cul­tur­al cen­ters —pro­vides over 250 authors a plat­form for shar­ing their books each year.

JBC Net­work arranges over 1,300 pro­grams, both vir­tu­al­ly and in-per­son, for our mem­ber sites, includ­ing spe­cial fam­i­ly pro­gram­ming with chil­dren’s book authors around hol­i­days, Sun­day school, or camp; cook­ing demos and con­ver­sa­tions about food and Jew­ish iden­ti­ty with cook­book authors; One Book, One Com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams fea­tur­ing an author that has writ­ten on a mean­ing­ful top­ic for the com­mu­ni­ty; Yom HaShoah pro­gram­ming with authors of recent Holo­caust mem­oirs, fic­tion, and his­to­ry; events with LGBTQ+ activist authors; inti­mate book clubs and salon expe­ri­ences; deep dives into con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish prac­tice and rit­u­al; mind­ful­ness work­shops; and so much more.