Susan Kusel
Nov 22, 2022Books, Antisemitism, and a Viral Tweet
A Conversation with Library Director Susan Kusel
New Books Network 2022
Need help curating a list of Holocaust books for your students or library patrons? What’s on your shelf? What should be there? This podcast episode explores:
- The most commonly assigned Holocaust books.
- Why some of them are books you should never assign.
- Recommendations for books to assign, read, and share.
- Gaps in the literature.
- Gatekeepers of higher education.
- Susan’s wish-list.
Our guest is: Susan Kusel, who is the Library Director at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia. She is also an author, a children’s book consultant and a former independent bookstore buyer. She has served on multiple book award committees including the Caldecott Medal and as the chair of the Sydney Taylor Book Award. She is a former board member of the Association of Jewish Libraries. Her debut picture book, The Passover Guest won the Sydney Taylor Book Award.
Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.
Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:
- Deborah Hopkinson, We Must Not Forget
- Dita Kraus, A Delayed Life: The True Story of the Librarian of Auschwitz
- Susan Kusel, The Passover Guest
- Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
- Doreen Rappaport, Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust
- David Safier, 28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto
- Hana Volavkova et al, I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944
- Liza Wiemer, The Assignment
- Elie Wiesel, Night
- Susan’s wish list
- The Blog: The Sydney Taylor Schooze
- The Association of Jewish Libraries
- Sydney Taylor Book Award
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