SATA

• Cakes and Miracles: A Purim Tale Viking (New York, NY), 1991
• Night Lights: A Sukkot Story Apples & Honey Press (Millburn, NJ), 2020
• A Persian Princess Apples & Honey Press (Millburn, NJ), 2020

1. Night lights : a Sukkot story LCCN 2019024920 Type of material Book Personal name Goldin, Barbara Diamond, author. Main title Night lights : a Sukkot story / by Barbara Diamond Goldin ; illustrated by Amberin Huq. Published/Produced Millburn, New Jersey : Apples & Honey Press, an imprint of Behrman House, [2020] Projected pub date 2008 Description pages cm ISBN 9781681155470 (hardcover) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. A Persian princess : by Barbara Diamond Goldin ; illustrated by Steliyana Doneva. LCCN 2019002820 Type of material Book Personal name Goldin, Barbara Diamond, author. Main title A Persian princess : by Barbara Diamond Goldin ; illustrated by Steliyana Doneva. Published/Produced Millburn, New Jersey : Apples and Honey Press, [2020] ©2020 Projected pub date 2004 Description pages cm ISBN 9781681155531

• Barbara Diamond Goldin website - https://www.barbaradiamondgoldin.com/

  Biography
  Excerpts from Something About The Author
  [Autobiography Series, Volume 26. With an updated section at the end.]
  Young Barbara, 1950
  Young Barbara, 1950

  There I was, seven years old, trooping behind my father along with my two younger brothers to the large vegetable garden that grew by the railroad tracks. We each carried paper bags to hold the tomatoes and cucumbers and radishes that we would pick. Not an unusual event, you're thinking, but to us it was. At the time, we lived in the middle of New York City on the fifth floor of a fifteen floor building that was part of a larger apartment complex. How my father found this garden tended by the railroad workers in their spare time I don't know. Since no one else ventured there, the railroad workers smiled at us when we came and let us pick what we wanted.

  My father, who was born on a farm in the Catskill Mountains, was forever "exploring," as he called it, and we children were delighted with his finds. To this day I still love the city and the country and "exploring." Thanks to my father, I became just as used to picking blueberries in the woods in upstate New York as I was crossing the busy city streets going to school or falling asleep to the sound of the elevated trains outside my bedroom window.

  My mother tells many stories about me from the first eight years of my life growing up in New York City. She says that when I was about two years old, she lost me in a big store and was frantically looking for me when she saw a large crowd by the cash registers. She feared the worst-that I had hurt myself. But when she reached the circle, she saw me in the center, dancing around and putting on a show. I must have thought I was at one of our family gatherings.

  Another story she tells is that I loved going to the movie theater. In those days, the theater played the same movie over and over again, and you paid one admission and could sit there all day long. Once when I was around six, she had to send Uncle Lou after me to drag me out of the theater. I had sat through Elephant Walk about five times. It's no wonder that, to this day, I have a vivid image in my mind of a huge herd of elephants stampeding through a villa with Elizabeth Taylor looking on in terror.

  When I was two and a half, my brother Robert was born. I must have been a bit jealous because there's a story about me squeezing cherry juice right into his eyes. Bert was born a few years later. For years I was the "big" sister, until Robert and Bert grew to be over six feet tall and I stayed a shrimp of five feet two and a half inches.

  My mom read lots of books to us when we were little, and this must have helped give me my love of books. But I had trouble when I went to first grade where they taught reading by emphasizing sight recognition of whole words. As soon as my mother saw my very poor grade in reading, she took over and taught me to read using phonics, which emphasizes learning the alphabet, the sounds of the letters, and blending the letters together. I did much better in school after that.

  Another memory I have of these years in the New York City apartment house was coming home from school and seeing fire trucks in front of my building. Immediately I worried that the fire was in my apartment. It was. A fire had started in the kitchen and smoke filled the whole place. By the time I arrived, my brothers were hiding under their beds and my mother was trying to convince the firemen not to chop up the furniture.

  Sometimes I liked being the oldest child and sometimes I didn't. I liked being the one to get a watch first and go to bed later than my brothers, but I didn't always like being in charge of them. Robert and Bert could be a handful. Once my mother sent me off with Robert to try out the brand-new wading pool in the nearby park. It didn't take us long to find out, however, that the pool didn't actually have any water in it. Its cement cracks had recently been filled with a black tar which was still drying. Of course my brother Robert found the tar and smeared it all over his hair. When I brought him home, my mother had to cut a good portion of his hair off, and she wasn't too happy with me either.

  When I was eight years old, my father accepted a job transfer to Philadelphia. Philadelphia was only ninety miles from New York, but it was worlds away to me. We moved midway through the school year, my third grade year. Besides leaving my extended family in New York, my school, and my friends, I suddenly found out that I was different. I was the new kid in the class, the school, and the neighborhood. I was teased and bullied because I was new and had a New York accent.

  In fourth grade things improved. I had a wonderful teacher named Mrs. Chambeau who supplied us all with books from her own lending library. That was the year I really began to lose myself in books. We also moved to a house on a street full of kids of all ages. I roller-skated with them in the street, jumped hopscotch and rope, and swapped secrets. In summer, everyone moved outside. It was too hot inside in those days before every house had air conditioning. Parents dragged television sets out onto the stoop, the steps in front of our attached "row" houses. They watched favorite shows like Ed Sullivan and The Honeymooners, chatted with neighbors, and kept an eye on all the kids. We, the kids, played hide-and-seek among the bushes, jacks on the steps, bottle caps in the street, and ball bouncing games against the brick walls. We played until the last possible moment.

  All the way through the twelfth grade, I continued to live on this same street in Philadelphia. I worked hard in school, "hung out" with my friends, and enjoyed my family. My father still took us "exploring," often to Pennsylvania Dutch farm auctions where we'd get stuck behind horse-drawn Amish wagons and eat shoofly pie at farmers' markets.

  My mom, who had been a medical secretary, stayed home to take care of us. She made lots of cakes which never lasted long. She'd put a just-baked cake out on the kitchen table to cool, and one of us, most likely Bert, would eat a piece out of the middle, the moistest part. If Mom did get a chance to frost the cake, one of us would invariably come along and gobble up finger fulls of frosting off the cake, thinking that no one would notice.

  The three of us together could be quite a force. We regularly scared away baby-sitters by teasing them and spying on them when they brought their boyfriends over. But we soon found out that baby-sitterless, we were also very good at scaring ourselves. When our parents went out at night, we loved to watch all those scary movies on TV. The tricky part came when the movie was over. We'd all three make a mad dash for the stairs at the same time, pushing and shoving. Not one of us wanted to be the last one to reach those stairs, because, by an unwritten rule, that person had to turn off the TV and all the downstairs lights, and mount the stairs in the dark!

  During these growing-up years, I read all the time, but especially in summer. And went on endless walks to the library to replenish my supply, especially any book by Enid Blyton I could find. I loved her adventure stories. My mother would try and get me out of my room into the "fresh air," but if my friends were at camp or "down the shore," she didn't succeed.

  I didn't really think of myself as a writer when I was growing up. I didn't write stories or poems except in school. But I loved to tell stories. I'd often make up stories in my head before I went to sleep. And when I baby-sat, which was very often because I liked making my own money, I figured out a way to get the parents to ask me back. I'd tell the kids a story, often an outer-space adventure, using the kids as the main characters, and leave it hanging in the middle. They would beg to have me as their sitter. I also loved writing letters, keeping journals, and doing my own research that had nothing to do with school.

  Photo © 2001 Barbara Goldin
  Barbara and her Dad

  My dad loved to read about history, including ancient history. Maybe that's why I chose ancient Egypt as my passion. Or it could have been that I fell in love with an historical fiction book called Mara: Daughter of the Nile, but for a few years I read everything at the library about Ancient Egypt and kept lots of notes. I even thought I wanted to be an archaeologist until I went to college and fell asleep at the archaeology club meetings. My friend Kathy, who also thought she wanted to be an archaeologist, told me I snored.

  A big part of my life growing up in Philadelphia was my synagogue. My family belonged to a small one that started in a house and grew larger over the years as more and more families joined. For the most important holidays of the year, the fall High Holidays, we had services in the movie theater because the synagogue was too small to fit all the people who wanted to come. We got to sit in those plush velvet seats and smell popcorn while the rabbi and cantor were up where the movie usually was.

  For college, I chose the University of Chicago. The U of C was an ideal school for me, although I wasn't always sure of it at the time. The courses and professors were exciting and challenging, and I learned how to really do research, about everything. I am often thankful for my education there, because it has helped me so much in my work as a writer now.

  It was during college that I settled on my career choice of teaching. I was especially influenced by some volunteer work I did on the south side of Chicago through a student tutoring project called STEP. I worked with the same boy Gregory for three years and helped him with his reading. I got to know a group of his friends and would often take them all over the city, to the museums, parks, downtown. One Halloween I took them trick-or-treating in my neighborhood where, to their delight, they collected bags and bags of candy. The problem came at the end of the night. They had to figure out how to get that candy back home without it getting stolen by the gangs in their neighborhood. Their solution was to stuff the bags under their coats and brave the walk home, luckily successfully.

  Photo © 2001 Barbara Goldin
  College Graduation

  The year I graduated from college, 1968, was also the year I married my high school sweetheart, Alan Goldin. For three years we were both teachers and spent our summers traveling-all over Europe, the United States and Canada. During this time of my life, I avidly explored various art forms like pottery and weaving, which I would later give up to devote to the one I find most fulfilling—writing.

  One summer we traveled to western Canada and the Banff School of Fine Arts, where Alan took photography and I studied weaving. We lived in a tent, wove and took pictures, swam in natural hot springs, and hiked to tea houses in the Canadian National Parks. We were as likely to meet a bear on the trail from the campground to the studio as we were to meet a fellow artist.

  During the school year, we taught in public schools in the Gloucester, Massachusetts area and lived by the sea. Gloucester was full of "atmosphere," and I loved waking up very early, walking along the harbor to Bear Skin Neck to have breakfast at Ellen's. That's where the local fishermen gathered before they went out on their boats to start their day's work.

  After a year of course work at Boston University, I taught the educably retarded one year and the emotionally disturbed another and found it all a real challenge. It was around this time that I decided to concentrate on teaching preschool. Perhaps, I reasoned, if we got to kids in the early years, we could prevent, diagnose, and work with the kinds of problems I had seen in the older students. When I taught, I found that my special education background was an enormous resource for me in working with the children and their parents.

  At this point, Alan decided he wanted to leave teaching altogether and study forestry out west. We soon left for Missoula, Montana, where, on my first day in our new apartment, I ran into another tenant skinning a black bear in our joint backyard.

  I found a teaching job in a preschool, and decided to train in the Montessori method with a wonderful teacher and friend Valeska Appleberry. Spending a year away from Montana to do that, I immersed myself in a training course in Michigan for a summer, and in Valeska's school in Yellow Springs, Ohio, for the school year. I lived with her and her husband Lynton and learned much more from them than methods of teaching.

  When I returned to Montana, I not only went to work in a Montessori school there, but also opened up a children's bookstore with a friend, Georgia Johnson, who had been trained as a children's librarian. We both loved children's books and jumped into this business endeavor with much enthusiasm. But before long, Alan had finished his course of study in forestry and soils, and took a job with the Soil Conservation Service in Goldendale, Washington. I sold my share of the bookstore to Georgia and moved to eastern Washington.

  In Goldendale, I worked as a children's librarian in the quaint public library. We came to know the Columbia River area and Mt. Adams, and picked and canned all the peaches we could stand. I got an even better education in children's books at my job in the library. We were also able to spend time with my college roommate Kristin Skotheim who lived north of us in the town of Toppenish. She taught at Project Pallatisha for handicapped pre-schoolers on the Yakima Indian reservation and took us to our first real pow wow. Later on I would do a retelling of a Native American story from this area of the country for Harcourt Inc. called Coyote and the Fire Stick.

  After two years in Goldendale, Alan was offered a job transfer to the western part of the state, to Bellingham, Washington. Bellingham was midway between the two lively cities of Seattle and Vancouver. I was very drawn to the awesome landscape of water, mountains, and trees, and to the lifestyle and myths of the Northwest Coast native peoples in this northwest corner of Washington State. Alan and I traveled up and down the coast where it was an everyday experience to watch tens of eagles circling overhead. We traveled to the interior of British Columbia where native villages dotted with impressive totem poles stood along the rivers. I volunteered in my friend Kristin's Lummi Head Start classroom and searched through local libraries hunting for information and stories. Besides Coyote and the Fire Stick, another one of my books has come out of this period of my life—The Girl Who Lived with the Bears, a Haida-Tlingit tale, also for Harcourt Inc.

  It was while living in Bellingham that I became a writer. During all my years of preschool teaching (eleven), in all sorts of schools in all kinds of places, I told stories I made up on the spot to the children. I remember one school especially that had a large closet off the main room. Sometimes we'd go in there for a story. There's nothing like a dark closet for effect, especially around Halloween. A turning point came for me when one little girl asked for a particular story over again—one that I had told the year before. Much to my dismay, I couldn't remember it. I decided that I had better start writing down some of these stories.

  So I began taking classes in writing books for children from Dr. Flora Fennimore at Western Washington University. She emphasized the joy of the process, not the focus on the end product. I learned that by writing more and more, my end product improved over time with practice. Listening to feedback from others and revising a lot helped. I found out that I loved to write and was reminded of my father's efforts. Before I was born, and off and on while I was growing tip, he had written poems and stories. He even had a short story published in Boy's Life during his Boy Scout leader's days, of which he was very proud.

  This was also about the time that I had our first child, Josee, named after my grandpa Joe. She was a lively and alert baby, loved getting into things and pulling everything out from purses, drawers, and clean folded laundry hampers. I timed my writing sessions with her nap times and became a very disciplined writer. The minute she fell asleep, I would head for my tiny study. A lot of my early stories (never published) were about my experiences with Josee—berry picking, camping, carving pumpkins.

  When Josee was a toddler, I took a course in writing for children given by Jane Yolen at Centrum in nearby Port Townsend, Washington. I had read every single one of Jane Yolen's books I could find while I was working at the Goldendale Public Library. She had been a favorite of Georgia's, my old bookstore partner, who first pointed out The Girl Who Cried Flowers to me.

  Jane Yolen turned out to be a down-to-earth and charming person, and a most helpful and perceptive teacher. She not only listened to our stories, taught us how to critique each other's work, and inspired us to write and rewrite, but she also taught us about the nitty gritty aspects of writing and marketing.

  I also met a whole group of people who were writing for children, including Nancy White Carlstrom, who turned out to be a kindred spirit. After the workshop, we both joined an ongoing Society of Children's Book Writers critique group in Seattle, which I drove to each week from Bellingham—an hour and a half away. The group was a great support during all the years when rejection letters were the norm. In my case, it was five years of rejection letters before I sold my first book to a publisher.

  Photo © 2001 Barbara Goldin
  Barbara with her children Josee and Jeremy, 1983

  We lived for a total of eight years in Bellingham and saw Josee in a new light as a big sister to a sweet and (at the time he seemed to be a) very mild tempered baby brother. I continued going to my writing group in Seattle, taking baby Jeremy in a basket to the meetings where he would sleep through all the critiquing. I adapted my writing to Josee and Jeremy's schedules, grabbing writing time when I could. Often I woke up early to write before anyone else was awake.

  I had lots of writing ideas by this time, many from my early experiences of growing up in a large extended family. I became very interested in researching and writing about Eastern Europe because of my grandparents. Three out of four of them were from the "Old Country." I heard that term a lot while I was growing up, but I realized as an adult that I knew very little about what it was like in Eastern Europe or about how my grandparents lived when they were young. And I couldn't ask them. They were all gone.

  I began to read everything I could on Eastern European life, especially memoirs and fiction by great Yiddish writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Shalom Aleichem. I looked at old photographs of small town shtetl life. Quite a few of my picture book stories came from this period of time when I read and thought about Eastern Europe and my grandparents—books like Just Enough Is Plenty: A Hanukkah Tale, Cakes and Miracles: A Purim Tale, and The Magician's Visit: A Passover Tale.

  Once I brought my first published book, Just Enough Is Plenty: A Hanukkah Tale, to my cousin Sarah to show it to her. By this time, she was my only relative still alive who had lived in Eastern Europe before World War II. She looked at the book, looked up at me, and said, "This is just the way it was." Her words made me feel so good.

  Another story based on my early years called "Ketsele's Gift" was published in Cricket in April of 1989. The girl in the story is based on me and the grandfather on my grandpa Joe. When I do school visits, I like to read this story and talk about what is true in it and what is fiction. I learned a lot about myself and my relationship with my grandfather from writing this story. And I find that the discoveries I make when I write are one of the most exciting parts of being a writer.

  This incident—making a present for my grandfather for his first visit to my new house in Philadelphia—was a memory that had stuck in my mind for many years. By writing the story, I discovered it had stayed with me for a reason—there had been something unresolved that continued to bother me over the years, something I did not understand. I had worked for days on the present—a notebook full of Hebrew words—and thought my grandfather would be so pleased and would love the fact that I was learning his language in my new Hebrew school. But when I gave him the notebook, he hardly paid any attention to it. I was very disappointed and never knew why he didn't react the way I had expected.

  In writing the story, I realized that as a nine year old I hadn't understood that he spoke Yiddish and not Hebrew. They are two very different languages that use the same alphabet. I wondered if he would have been excited if I had done the notebook in Yiddish instead. So, in my story, the girl figures out this difference in the two languages herself and starts a new notebook for her grandfather with Yiddish words. He is very pleased and ends up teaching her more and more Yiddish. Much to my surprise, this story turned out to be all about communication between a girl and her grandfather, and the frustrations of a granddaughter who can't speak to her grandfather in his language. Ketsele's Gift has a happy ending and I felt a lot better after writing it. I couldn't change the past by writing about it, but I could certainly understand it better. I find I often work out questions I have, and problems I am thinking about, through my writing.

  One idea for a book that was specifically inspired by being in Bellingham is called Red Means Good Fortune: A Story of San Francisco's Chinatown. The idea for this story came from a conversation I had with a friend there about prejudice and minorities in the Northwest. She related some stories her grandmother, a native Bellinghamster, told her about the Chinese who worked on the railroad line that ended in Bellingham. Her grandmother said that when they finished the line, the opening to one of their tunnels was purposely blocked up so that the whole crew was killed. I was horrified by this story and always meant to look up the incident in old newspaper files in Bellingham to see if it was a true story. I never did. But her story led me to do research on the Chinese immigrants on the West Coast. I was curious to find out if there had been this much prejudice against the Chinese and discovered that there had. I wove this research into the story for Red Means Good Fortune about a boy Jin Mun who lives in San Francisco's Chinatown, whose father owns a laundry, and whose brother helps build the railroad. The plot revolves around Jin Mun's accidental meeting with a Chinese slave girl Wai Hing and his plans to buy her freedom.

  As it happens, I knew nothing about Chinese slavery until I came across stories about it in the books I read. Originally, I thought my book would be about a boy who worked on the railroad. Only after doing all the research did I decide to focus the story on Jin Mun and Wai Hing. This is one of the interesting aspects of researching an historical fiction story—the research can influence the plot and change its direction.

  In looking back now after I've written a number of books, I realize that much of my writing grows out of my interest in my own cultural background and religion, and in others'. When I think of myself as that sixth grader who read every book I could find on ancient Egypt, I realize that it wasn't archaeology that I was interested in so much as people and the way they have lived and do live in different times and places, and how they do when they're transplanted from one place to another, just as I seemed continually destined to be.

  This interest periodically pops up in my life in the form of actually "exploring" (to use my father's term) different people's neighborhoods or villages, attending a variety of places of worship, and talking to a mix of spiritual leaders. Never having taken a formal comparative religions course, I have often created my own. During my first year of college, I remember dragging friends to different kinds of Services—Lutheran one week, Ethical Culture or Quaker another, once even to a mission on skid row in downtown Chicago where we were given free doughnuts and coffee and preaching besides. I still am very much interested in religions, my own and others', in what people believe, how they pray, how they celebrate, how they try to answer the "big" questions.

  In Bellingham I picked up on this "exploring" of religion again, this time within Judaism. I had lived in places that were very isolated as far as my own religion was concerned, places that did not even have a synagogue. Now I lived close to cities like Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, which had many choices.

  One Saturday, I drove up to Vancouver to "try" a service at Or Shalom, a Jewish group. I remember entering a dark hallway, standing there transfixed, as I listened to a man with a deep and rich voice tell a story from the Old Country, a story about faith and magical prophets and charity.

  Over the next eight years, I heard many more stories from Rabbi Daniel Siegel and his wife Hanna Tiferet Siegel. As it turned out, the Siegels and Or Shalom opened a whole new world to me within my own religion.

  The stories the Siegels told drew from many sources, including Talmud and Midrash (terms I wasn't too sure about), Hasidic and contemporary rabbis, and religious leaders of all paths. As I learned more and more stories and commentaries, I decided that someday I would like to collect a group of these stories and retell them in a way that would appeal to children and their families today. This idea was to simmer on the back burner of my mind for years, as I went about learning where and how to find these stories to retell.

  Besides searching for wonderful stories to retell from classical Jewish sources, I also began to write my own Jewish holiday stories that weren't too informational, too teachy. I knew from all my submitting and rejection letters that editors were looking for Jewish holiday stories, but not ones "bogged down" with information. I worked hard on trying to make a story move, not just telling about a holiday, but telling a good story that happened to involve a holiday. When I finally started to sell to children's magazines, I knew my stories were getting better. I was also writing articles for Jewish newspapers about how to celebrate the Jewish holidays with children. These articles fed into my fictional holiday stories as background information and a source for ideas.

  After eight years in Bellingham, my husband Alan’s job came to an end, and he applied for an opening in the soil science department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I was thrilled when he was hired. I would be living near Jane Yolen, my Centrum teacher, and much closer to my parents and extended family. One big garage sale, lots of good-bye parties and farewells, frantic packing and we were in Western Massachusetts.

  Barbara Goldin
  Photo © Ellen Augarten

  I was happy to be back east, but Alan was not. He wanted to take a different job and move again just a year later. I had had too much of moving and very much wanted to set down roots. The little girl in me, who had moved from New York to Philadelphia and been picked on for being different, had had enough of being the new kid on the block. Eventually, Alan and I separated and then divorced. Though my personal life was difficult at that time, my writing life blossomed. I continued to work hard at my writing while teaching in a synagogue preschool. Deborah Brodie at Viking liked my Hanukkah story Just Enough Is Plenty and accepted it for publication. I was thrilled!

  She also accepted my Purim story Cakes and Miracles, which is about a blind boy who realizes in a dream that he can "see" in his mind—and that he should act on what he "sees." He uses his skills with his hands to shape Purim cakes and cookies that sell well in the marketplace. I dedicated this book to my son Jeremy because, as he says in his own words, "I like to make cookies and I like to eat them."

  Another book I wrote for Deborah Brodie was about the holiday of Passover that could be used at the festival meal called a seder. This book took a long time because first I read many books about Passover and many Haggadot, the books used at the seder. The hardest part of doing this book was figuring out how to organize all the material that I had accumulated in an interesting way. At last, I had the idea of looking at the book as being about two journeys, and so I divided A Passover Journey: A Seder Companion into two sections. The first is about the Israelites' journey from Egypt through the desert to the Promised Land. The second is about our own journey which we take during the Passover seder when we relive the journey of the ancient Israelites in our own way.

  The picture book Magician's Visit was originally part of the larger Passover book, but when we cut it, Deborah thought my retelling would make a good picture book on its own.

  Another idea Deborah gave me was to write for the Viking series of Once Upon America. She knew how much I enjoy doing historical fiction and research. Two Janes—Jane Yolen and Jane Gronau—gave me the idea for Fire: The Beginnings of the Labor Movement, which is a story based on the Triangle Factory fire in New York City in 1911. This idea seemed a natural for me since my mother's family lived on the Lower East Side of New York City near the factory during the early 1900s. Also, my grandpa Joe had been a garment worker, a presser of ladies' cloaks and suits, and the Triangle Factory was part of that garment industry. Here I was mining my family's past once again, a comfortable feeling.

  I loved doing the research for this book-I walked the streets of the Lower East Side, the names of which have not changed over the years. I found the Triangle Factory building, which still stands near New York University and has a plaque on its corner dedicated to the 146 workers who died in the fire. I visited a fire engine museum and a tenement museum, and read many memoirs to create the story about a girl named Rosie whose older sister works in the Triangle Factory on the day of the big fire.

  Facts that I read about influenced my plot. For instance, I read that victims of the fire were sometimes identified by their jewelry. So early in the book I introduce Rosie's cousin Celia who has just become engaged. Later, it is this cousin who perishes in the fire and is identified by her engagement ring.

  At about the same time that Deborah Brodie accepted Just Enough Is Plenty, I met a bookstore owner named Sondra Botnick. Remember that idea for a book of stories from Midrash? Well, this is where Sandra fit in. Sandra guided me through her bookstore, helping me select those books that would teach me more about Midrash and how and where to find these classical rabbinic stories. I learned that Midrash are those stories rabbis and others told and still tell about the Bible—to explain or explore the characters, events, and laws found there.

  Barbara, daughter Josee and son Jeremy
  Barbara, daughter Josee and son Jeremy - Photo © Ellen Augarten

  Another person that I met at this time, at a conference, was Arthur Kurzweil, who was an editor at Jason Aronson Inc., Publishers. I asked him if he would be interested in a book of Midrash retold for children, sent him a proposal, and got a positive response. I tremendously enjoyed working on the book that resulted from this proposal. It is A Child's Book of Midrash, later reissued with the new title of The Family Book of Midrash. I dedicated this book to my daughter, Josee, since it was she who partly started me on this search to begin with—to find a book like this to read my own children.

  I also wrote a second book for Jason Aronson called Creating Angels: Stories of Tzedakah in which I retold stories from classic sources as well as from Hasidic rabbis and folklore. All the stories are about some aspect of charity, or acts of giving, of loving kindness. These two books that Jason Aronson published are now available from Rowman & Littlefield, Inc. Besides Viking and Aronson, I have also been fortunate to have had books published by Harcourt Inc., including the two retellings of Native American stories. Jane Yolen, who at one time had her own imprint at Harcourt, was my editor for The World's Birthday: A Rosh Hashanah Story. The idea for this story began years before at an Or Shalom Rosh Hashanah children's service. As part of the service, Hanna Tiferet Siegel presented the children with a round challah birthday cake for the world that they loved. Emphasizing that Rosh Hashanah is the world's birthday struck me as an appealing start for a picture book story. The characters in the book evolved from earlier stories I had written and never sold.

  Years before, when my children were young, I came across Sydney Taylor's Danny Loves a Holiday. I loved Danny—his honest emotions, humor, warmth, and love of the Jewish holidays. Inspired by Taylor's stories, I developed my own characters, a brother and a sister, and wrote a collection of Jewish holiday stories. As it turned out, this was a practice collection, because it never sold. But I used the characters and some plot ideas in later stories. These characters popped up in a March 1992 Highlights story called "Brave Like Mordecai" about the holiday of Purim, in The World's Birthday, and in Night Lights: A Sukkot Story which I worked on with Elizabeth Van Doren at Harcourt. In Night Lights, the idea as well as the characters evolved from this earlier collection. A boy Daniel is both eager and afraid to sleep outside in the family's sukkah, a temporary shelter set up for the holidays, with only his big sister Naomi.

  Because of my children Josee and Jeremy, I found myself writing in odd places. I became adept at packing my bags with research materials, rough drafts, tablets, and setting up a temporary work area in a chilly ski resort restaurant and other unlikely spots.

  One summer, for her sixteenth birthday present, Josee wanted me to take her and three friends on a camping-hiking trip to Acadia National Park in Maine. At the same time, I had a deadline for my Hanukkah collection called While the Candles Burn. All the stories were complete for the collection, but the long introduction to the book and the shorter introductions for each story were not yet written. Undaunted, we packed up the car and off we went, Josee, three friends, me, tents, sleeping bags, cook stove, clothes, rain and writing gear. We set up in a campground near Southwest Harbor, Maine, and I cased the small town nearby for a possible writing spot. I found it-a restaurant called the Deacon's Bench that opened up early, very early. Each morning, while the girls slept in, I drove into town and set up at one of the tables in the homey restaurant. I felt like I was in someone's living room. I learned all the local gossip, even got included in a couple of conversations, and wrote all those introductions. Now, whenever I look at the book While the Candles Burn, I think of Maine and harbors and fishing boats, of homemade muffins, and a wonderful vacation by the sea.

  Other books I have written besides the above include: Coyote and the Fire Stick and Journeys With Elijah: Eight Tales of the Prophet that I worked on with editor Liz Van Doren at Harcourt; The Girl Who Lived with the Bears and A Mountain of Blintzes with Anne Davies at Harcourt; and Bat Mitzvah with Deborah Brodie at Viking. I’ve also written two more collections—Ten Holiday Jewish Children’s Stories for Pitspopany Press, and 101 Jewish Read-Aloud Stories for Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, plus over a dozen classroom readers for Wright Group/McGraw Hill, Options Publishing, and Zaner-Bloser. These readers range from biographies of Louis Armstrong and Fannie Lou Hamer to stories about the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, and students who adopt a nearby river and become river pollution activists.

  As you can see from what I've written, the ideas for my stories come from many sources—from real life incidents, experiences with my children, childhood experiences, family stories, from my readings and research, from things that fascinate me that I hear, come across or read about, from dreams, daydreams, conversations, and issues that concern me.

  You can also see that I like to do a variety of different kinds of writing. I love finding wonderful stories and retelling them. I enjoy writing original picture book stories, as well as stories for older children. Historical fiction, nonfiction, and books based on interviews as well as research are all a welcome challenge for me. My editors stretch me and I stretch myself to try new things. I have also found that my agents have helped me make sense of the business as well as the creative side of being a writer, first Virginia Knowlton and now Scott Treimel. I am also part of two writing groups and enjoy their critique sessions, retreats, camaraderie, and support.

  My writing life is a full one—rewarding and busy. I also have my day jobs. I continued teaching until 2001—a total of 11 years in preschools and 10 years teaching English in the secular department of a Jewish Day School Middle School. I mainly taught creative writing and literature there—the world of words. My students and I worked together on their stories, poems,and essays; on brainstorming ideas, following through, revising, and forming their own peer critique groups. My students put together yearbooks, shared their poetry in classroom "cafes," taught me how to use computers, wrote graduation speeches, argued with me about books and grammar rules. We went through the ups and downs of submitting stories to magazines and writing contests, since some of them chose to pursue the process of trying to get their own work published. From the spring of 2001 until 2011, I was the youth librarian in a small public library. I ran summer reading programs, ordered and weeded books, helped patrons find just the right read, cleaned up after art projects at story hours, set up displays. My job was full of variety, challenge, fun, people, books, and surprises. As my director said, "Everything is in the job description."

  During this time, my book, The Best Hanukkah Ever, was published in 2007 by Marshall Cavendish (now owned by Two Lions, part of Amazon). It's a picture book with illustrations by Avi Katz. I have long been a lover of stories about the town of fools called Chelm, and the books about the Stupids by Harry Allard (The Stupids Step Out is one title). It was probably inevitable that odd characters like the Knoodle family would pop into my head and start to do outrageous things that demanded my putting them into a story. In this book, my silly family, the Knoodles, learn all about giving gifts on Hanukkah.

  In 2008 I entered the MLIS (Masters in Library and Information Services) program from Simmons College held at the Mount Holyoke campus. For three years I continued in my day job as children's librarian and also took courses in Young Adult literature, technology, academic libraries, management, reference, serving the underserved (which included a visit to a prison library), preservation management, web design, etc. It was a stimulating experience that pushed me to grow as a librarian. After receiving my MLIS degree, I became the director of a Western Massachusetts public library and have enjoyed the change. I now order and weed adult books, do state reports to earn certification for our library, do the budget reports, participate in town meetings (local democracy at work!), and oversee the upgrade of the HVAC system. Once again, "Everything is in the job description." I enjoy our staff and patrons and love talking about books in whatever form (audio books, ebooks, book books).

  I've continued writing. From 2008 until recently, I worked with Jane Yolen on Meet Me At the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible, with illustrations by Vali Mintzi (pub date January 2018, publisher Charlesbridge). The book took longer to write than we expected because of my entering graduate school and then changing jobs. It also took longer because of the scope of the book (Women in the Bible!), the research that it required, and the planning and design of the book with all its moving parts. The parts include retellings of the Bible stories, historical facts, folktales, midrash, an Imagine piece for each woman by me (like a diary entry), a poem for each by Jane. Charlesbridge did an amazing job of designing the book, editing it, and finding a talented illustrator. I learned so much by working with Jane, my mentor and dear friend. I had never collaborated on a book with someone before!

  Other developments with my writing during this time included a new edition of Cakes and Miracles with a revised and shortened text, illustrated by Jaime Zollars, published by Marshall Cavendish in 2010 (now owned by Two Lions, part of Amazon). A new edition of Night Lights was published by URJ (now published by Behrman House) in 2002 with illustrations by Laura Sucher. And a picture book, Never Too Tired, illustrated by Amanda Hall, was published in 2016 by PJ Library. PJ Library also has paperback versions of 6 other picture book titles of mine on its list. PJ Library offers free books on Jewish subjects to families who sign up for its program.

  In February of 2017 another picture book of mine, The Passover Cowboy, was published by Apples and Honey Press, illustrated by Gina Capaldi. I love writing stories set in different places where Jews have lived and discovering what their lives were like. This book takes place on the pampas (plains) of Argentina in the late 1880's, where Jews from Eastern Europe settled. They were able to move there through the philanthropy of Baron de Hirsch because their lives in Eastern Europe were so hard. The story is about the friendship of the main character, Jacob, who befriends Benito, an Argentine boy. Benito teaches Jacob how to ride and care for a horse, and to love the plains as he does. In return, Jacob shares one of his favorite holidays with his new friend—Passover.

  And a new and happy development in my life has been spending time (in one case mostly Facetime) with my two grandchildren. I'm looking forward to all the fun experiences with them and developing the new ideas for stories that are already bubbling up.

  Most of this autobiography appears in Volume 26
  Something About the Author: Autobiography Series
  Joyce Nakamura, Editor
  Published by Gale Research
  Farmington Hills, Michigan, 1998
  This biography webpage was updated November 8, 2017.

• Amazon -

  Barbara Diamond Goldin has written picture books, story collections, non-fiction, retellings, and historical fiction. In 1997, she received the prestigious Sydney Taylor Body-of-Work Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries. This award is presented to the author whose collected works are a distinguished contribution to Jewish literature for children. "Goldin's consistently commendable and recommendable books combine talented writing, solid research, personal commitment and deep caring".

  Barbara is currently a children's librarian. She also leads writing workshops and speaks about being a writer to school and library groups all over the country.

  For ten years she taught language arts and creative writing to 5th through 8th graders and for eleven years before that she was a preschool teacher. Her B.A. is in psychology from the University of Chicago and she did post-graduate work in teaching and school library media at Western Washington University and Boston University.

  Barbara Diamond Goldin says, "As a child, I was an avid reader, letter-writer, and frequenter of the public library. When I reached babysitting age, I discovered I loved making up and telling stories to my charges who would ask to have me back so they could hear the sequels to my stories. Later as an adult I turned the stories I told into written stories.

  "When writing, I dig into my past, my childhood, my family, and my personal experiences for material. I also research my subjects thoroughly and feel this adds depth to what I write. I love folklore and religion and the psychology of why people act the way they do. I find that often during the process of writing, I touch on questions and feelings that are closest to me.

  "My ideas often come from my own past and my family's past, from experiences I have had and from conversations I overhear or participate in. The ideas can also come from dreams and visual images that pop into my mind, sometimes while I'm driving. Then I have to pull over, get out my pencil and paper and write feverishly, hoping I'll be able to read my handwriting later.

  "My favorite place to work is in the college library near my house. I always heave a sigh of relief when I step into the peace and quiet of the library, knowing I have a few uninterrupted hours of writing ahead of me.

  "I still love to write and research and discover new worlds on paper. I even discover things about myself and my family. Writing is an exciting process for me. I'm never certain when I sit down to write what the next few hours will bring."

• From Publisher -

  Barbara Diamond Goldin is the author of many picture books and story collections. She received the prestigious Sydney Taylor Body-of-Work Award in 1997. A former teacher and children's librarian, Barbara is now a library director in Western Massachusetts, and she also leads writing workshops and speaks about writing to school and library groups around the country.

Goldin, Barbara Diamond A PERSIAN PRINCESS Apples & Honey Press (Children's Fiction) $17.95 4, 1 ISBN: 978-1-68115-553-1

A celebration of Purim with an appropriate Persian flavor.

Raya is happily baking cookies for Purim with her grandmother, Maman joon. They are called koloocheh and are from the family's Persian Jewish heritage. Unfortunately, Raya is too young to be in the school play, in which her older brother will play Mordecai. Maman joon pauses cooking in order to adjust his costume and beard. She can do even more for her granddaughter, though. In a trunk in her bedroom is a wide assortment of sparkly jewelry and brightly colored scarves--just perfect for a little girl who wants to pretend to be Esther. Maman joon has saved them from the time that she lived in Hamadan, a city in Iran. Together, the costumed girl and her grandmother share their baked treats with the neighbors, and Raya explains that she is a "Persian princess" just as Esther was. Even better, Raya decides to invite everyone to the house, where she will perform the story of Purim. It is a joyous time, indeed. Goldin's sweet story offers readers a celebration of Purim that is both familiar and different to that observed by Ashkenazic Jewry and more commonly seen in U.S. children's books but that can be enjoyed by all. Doneva's delicate cartoon illustrations are suitably colorful and depict a neighborhood of various ethnicities.

Family traditions and intergenerational love are strong and endearing in this fresh look at Purim. (author's note) (Picture book. 4-7)

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Goldin, Barbara Diamond: A PERSIAN PRINCESS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2020. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A611140368/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=94d7749b. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.

Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible.

By Jane Yolen and Barbara Diamond Goldin. Illus. by Vali Mintzi.

Jan. 2018. 112p. Charlesbridge, $18.99 (9781580893749). 221.9. Gr. 5-8.

That women are given short shrift in the Hebrew Bible is not news, but as Yolen and Goldin point out in their introduction, their stories have been more fully explored in Jewish midrash--defined in part as "a Jewish story that explains, clarifies, or elaborates" a Bible passage--and lately from a feminine perspective. The authors delve deeply into history and motivations in this collection of 14 biblical tales that highlight women, young and old, who have been imprinted on Western consciousness. First there is a recounting of the relevant story, with sidebars that explain terms and customs (e.g., the marriage of cousins or problematic issues such as the binding of Isaac). Following are short original works, including poems, that take readers inside the minds of the women. Each chapter features a lovely full-page piece of artwork. This organization, though somewhat clunky, nevertheless makes for an informative book. The authors don't shy away from difficult subjects--for instance, Naomi's instructions to Ruth about enticing their kinsman Boaz. At the conclusion, readers are encouraged to come up with their own midrashim.--Ilene Cooper

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
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Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
Cooper, Ilene. "Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 7, 1 Dec. 2017, p. 41+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A519036264/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=44782f8f. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.

YOLEN, Jane & Barbara Diamond Goldin. Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible. illus. by Vali Mintzi. 112p. bibliog. index. Charlesbridge. Jan. 2018. Tr $18.99. ISBN 9781580893749.

Gr 5-8--Yolen and Goldin have collaborated on a text suitable for students' first serious foray into Biblical analysis or midrash with a focus on women. ("Still we must never forget that even in the stories about men, there are women.") Nine chapters discuss a total of 14 women and girls from the Hebrew Bible. A working familiarity with the stories of Eve, Rebecca, Deborah, Esther, etc. is assumed. The opening page of each chapter notes the relevant Biblical verses for reference, but Yolen and Goldin move right into retelling and commentary. Using the Jewish tradition of marginalia, they include sidebars anticipating readers' questions, such as "So many men in the Bible have more than one wife--why?" They also discuss differing interpretations and additional insights held by Jewish tradition. Drawing connections among all three Abrahamic faiths, Yolen and Goldin often include references to Islamic practice and belief. However, the authors say little about the commonly held Islamic belief that Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Ishmael--not Isaac, as in Jewish and Christian tradition. Both authors present a more detailed imagining of the women's stories at the conclusion of each chapter, Goldin in prose and Yolen in verse. Mintzi's artwork, done in a variety of blues, oranges, browns, and reds, skillfully communicates the landscapes. VERDICT A solid source of study and reflection for libraries with religious patrons.--Maria O'Toole, Carroll Manor Elementary School, Adamstown, MD

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
O'Toole, Maria. "YOLEN, Jane & Barbara Diamond Goldin. Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible." School Library Journal, vol. 63, no. 12, Dec. 2017, p. 125+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A516634190/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c97040f1. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.

"Goldin, Barbara Diamond: A PERSIAN PRINCESS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2020. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A611140368/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=94d7749b. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020. Cooper, Ilene. "Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 7, 1 Dec. 2017, p. 41+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A519036264/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=44782f8f. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020. O'Toole, Maria. "YOLEN, Jane & Barbara Diamond Goldin. Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible." School Library Journal, vol. 63, no. 12, Dec. 2017, p. 125+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A516634190/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c97040f1. Accessed 26 Feb. 2020.

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