![]() Anyone raising Jewish kids or kids with Jewish traditions can go to and find out that it’s totally, absolutely free for families. The program is totally free for families and goes up to age 8 and now has a middle grade program too. They’ll be going into their 6th and 7th languages in 2020. Currently it’s now in more than 26 countries, 650,000 kids each month. So many families wanted to connect to the community through books! It grew first in North America and now it’s gone beyond that. The story goes that initially they expected about 200 families in Western Massachusetts to sign up. He wondered if you could do a Jewish program like Dolly’s. Harold had never seen Jewish children’s books before. Around the same time he was attending his family’s Passover Seder and his daughter-in-law brought whatever books she could find about Passover. ML: Harold was actually inspired by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. After all, folktales were an oral tradition before they were a book tradition.īB: Can you tell me a little more about the Harold Grinspoon Foundation program that sends books to families raising Jewish children? How did that start? How many families partake? Sometimes I listen while I’m driving the kids to carpool and I’ll forget to pause after I drop them off. In cases where a parent who has read the same book 50 times before bed and is exhausted and the kid is still ready to hear stories, they could put the podcast on them. ML: Certainly during travel time and in the car. So they’ve taken folktales that they’ve wanted to see but that didn’t work in a picture book format and now benefit from a looser oral translation.īB: And how do you envision this podcast being used? The nice thing about folktales is that we have a lot of information about where they originated. Some are screenwriters, and some are comedians. ML: That would be a group of script writers. As a result, podcasts extend being able to share stories together.īB: When I read a little into your podcast I saw that in its PR material it said that it, “lifts classic Jewish folk tales from the page, gives them a modern twist and brings them to sparkling life for families seeking an entertaining, enriching diversion from digital life.” Who rewrote these stories? Some kids even access devices on their own time. Stories are portable and podcasts can take stories that people love and put them in an even more portable format than books. ![]() Meredith Lewis: Well, PJ Library is all about families reading stories together but they realize that in 2020 families are on the go more than ever and it’s not always feasible for families to cuddle up. So I’ll ask you straight out – Why a podcast? Why now? ![]() Still, it’s always interesting to me when an organization thinks to start one. What’s up with that?īetsy Bird: So I love podcasts (I host two, so I’d better). Not just about the podcast itself, and what it means in the greater, grander scheme of storytelling, but also about that whole giving kids free books thing. To answer that I recently spoke with Meredith Lewis, the director of content at the Harold Grinspoon Foundation (which started the PJ Library program). And then PJ Library launched this podcast. I like the idea of someone out there sending good ones to kids. These books are carefully curated children’s books and are sent, for free, with the hope that they could, “help foster a love of reading along with child-friendly glimpses into Jewish history and culture.” Pretty neat, right? I mean, I’m a librarian. So every year, this organization called PJ Library ships more than 200,000 books out each month to families raising Jewish children. What about stories in a specific tradition? What about stories that connect kids to their heritage? How perfect to have kids discover them the same way, right? And not just Grimm brothers stuff. The Gidwitz show is a particularly good use of the medium, actually. My son could consume every last Captain Underpants uninterrupted if you asked him to (though where the HECK are the Dogman audiobooks, I ask you?) while my daughter loves Adam Gidwitz’s Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest podcast (which I’ve only just learned has Season 2 only on Pinna, doggone it). And like many kids their age, on long car trips I eschew the screens (which, if I’m going to be honest with you, sometimes make them want to throw up) in favor of audiobooks and podcasts. You could see the storyteller, sure, but for the most part it was the audible aspects that were the most important. When we talk about oral legends or storytelling, we get visions of ancient humans crouched around a fire while one of them builds whole worlds out of words. For reasons entirely of my own, I’ve been fascinated recently with the role of speaking stories aloud, as it relates to human creatures. ![]()
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