At summer camp, Carlie and Sara quickly bond over a love of singing and other shared interests, but Sara mistakes Carlie excitement over her surname as teasing, not knowing that it gives them something else in common.

When Carly unthinkingly makes fun of Sara's last name at mail call, her bunkmate refuses to be consoled. But their mutual love of music brings harmony to Shabbat dinner as well as to their friendship, and Carly finally gets the chance to reveal a secret of her own.

Key Selling Points A sweet summer camp story about a painfully shy girl who meets a boy with a rare genetic condition. The book explores themes of facing your fears and the nature of true friendship. One of the main characters has progeria, a genetic condition that causes premature aging. Most children who have this don’t live past age 14. This story had its genesis in a terrible summer camp experience for the author. The book has a happy ending. Bea and her new friends stay in touch after summer is over.

Welcome to Camp Shalom, a Jewish sleepaway camp that offers adventure and friendship! But when mysterious events start occurring, the campers will need to use their brains and work together-with some occasional sneaking around-to figure out what's really going on. Maya can't deny that she's nervous on the first day at Camp Shalom. She's never been to sleepaway camp before, she doesn't like insects and heat, and worst of all, she's afraid of swimming after an upsetting experience back at home. Maya feels a lot better about Camp Shalom after meeting friendly Dani, but she's not so sure about bossy Yael. When someone steals the special items their cabin needs to lead Shabbat, Maya and Dani do some sleuthing. They're no closer to catching the thief when Dani discovers that she is being accused. Now Maya really has to find out who sabotaged Shabbat-or her best friend will be sent home from camp. Meanwhile, she still has to pass the camp swimming test or she won't be able to go on the sleepover to Snake Island. Maya has a busy summer ahead, but with Dani's help-and maybe even Yael's-she will find out that honesty and the support of her friends can solve almost every problem.

Two neighbors—one Jewish, one Muslim—have always been best friends. When they both fall on hard times, can they find a way to help each other? In Fawzia Gilani's retelling of this folktale—which has both Jewish and Arab origins—differences are not always causes for conflict and friendship can overcome any obstacle.

Learn Ladino words and celebrate Shabbat.

A New York Times Notable Book 2012 The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: no one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there. To begin again. To start anew. But it isn’t quite working out that way for Kugel… His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won’t stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one Kugel bought, and when, one night, he discovers history—a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history—hiding upstairs in his attic, bad quickly becomes worse. Hope: A Tragedy is a hilarious and haunting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.