Author Writes Chanukah-Themed Book for Kids of All Backgrounds

October 31, 2025 Simone Ellin, Associate Editor

Laurel Snyder: "When I started out, I thought I was writing for grownups. And then at some point, it became very clear to me that I just wanted to write for children." (Provided photo)

Growing up in Roland Park and Catonsville, children’s book author Laurel Snyder always felt like an outsider to the local Jewish community.

Now an Atlanta resident, Snyder says it was only after she left Baltimore as an adult that she came to see her own Jewish heritage as being “as relevant as anyone else’s.”

Snyder’s latest work, “The Book of Candles: Eight Poems for Hanukkah” (HarperCollins) makes the celebration of the Festival of Lights accessible to Jews of all backgrounds as well as readers simply curious about the holiday, which will be observed Dec. 14-22.

Jmore recently spoke with Snyder, 51, a Sydney Taylor Book Award winner and National Jewish Book Award honoree, about “The Book of Candles,” her Jewish journey, and her career as an author and poet.

What was your relationship with Jewish Baltimore?

My dad grew up in Pikesville, and my grandparents lived in Pikesville, and we were members at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, and that’s where I had my bat mitzvah. My grandfather was a pediatrician in town, and whenever I met somebody from Baltimore in those years, I would tell them my grandfather was Gene Goldstein. Everybody would say, ‘That was my pediatrician!’

But my dad moved into the city. So when I was a little girl, we lived downtown, and I grew up largely in Govans. When my parents got divorced, my dad moved first to Woodberry and then to Lauraville, and my mom to Catonsville. So I’ve lived lots of different versions of Baltimore, but none of them are traditionally Jewish. I grew up going to Roland Park Public School, and there were a few Jewish kids here and there but I felt a little outside [the community].

How did that affect your writing?

For the first couple novels I wrote, I kind of avoided Jewish content because I felt like I couldn’t speak for the Jewish community. I had some idea that there was ‘the Jewish community.’

Several characters in my books are sort of Jewish but outside the normative or the mainstream Jewish community. As I got older and found my own ways of moving through the Jewish world and Jewish jobs and moved to other cities and things like that, I grew much more comfortable with the idea that my Jewish experience is as meaningful and relevant as anybody else’s, and that I could claim that in my books and share that.

How would you describe your writing journey?

When I started out, I thought I was writing for grownups. And then at some point, it became very clear to me that I just wanted to write for children. It took me a number of years to kind of let go of that idea that I was going to be an academic.

But then, the stories call to you. I got to graduate school and found I wasn’t making work anymore. When I did start writing again, I wrote this series of prose poems called ‘The Five Most Beautiful Dreams.’ I was showing them to somebody and said, ‘I want to see them chopped up on a page.’ I thought maybe I could collaborate with a visual artist and we could do a hybrid visual arts and poetry project. And whoever it was looked at me and said, ‘Laurel, that’s called a picture book.’

At first, you didn’t write picture books with Jewish content. When did that change?

After my kids were born, we joined the PJ Library program [which distributes free Jewish books to Jewish families], and I ended up writing an essay for what is now [the Jewish publication] Tablet. This was about 20 years ago. I wrote about how frustrated I was with the books from PJ. I felt like a lot of them weren’t as exciting as I wanted them to be, that my kids weren’t choosing them because they weren’t as interesting as the other picture books.

After I wrote this piece, I got an email from the PJ Library program. I was terrified opening it up but when I did, it was this amazing, so essentially Jewish response. It said, ‘We read your piece; we don’t disagree with you; we always want to be better. Since you’re a writer, why don’t you write some [books]?’

It really sent me on this interesting journey. I’ve done a number of PJ books now and became very close with the person who was the head of the selection committee at the time. It’s interesting how asking a difficult question can turn into a welcome. It was exactly what I needed. The first book was called ‘Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to be Kosher.’

My most recent novel, ‘The Witch of Woodland,’ is about a girl named Zippy who, like me, is not living in a Jewish neighborhood and doesn’t have Jewish friends. She is supposed to prepare for her bat mitzvah but doesn’t want to because she thinks she’s a witch. It drew on my life here in Atlanta, but also on growing up in Baltimore.

Why did you write ‘The Book of Candles’?

I’d sort of put off a Hanukkah book because it feels like 90% of Jewish picture books are Hanukkah books. I didn’t want to do it until I could do it in a way that felt different. It’s about a little child who is experiencing Hanukkah not for the first time, but the first time he’ll remember.

So there are eight poems, one for each night, and each one takes up two spreads. On each spread, there’s a box that has a thought for that night. I didn’t want the story to feel educational, but I wanted there to be some Jewish learning involved.

The poems are poems that anyone might enjoy and feel comfortable with. For example, there’s a midrash that on the last night [of the holiday], if all the candles go out at the same time, the smoke will carry your wishes to heaven. It has to be all of the candles at the same time, because anything else isn’t strong enough. I’ve never seen it happen, but I hope for it each year.

In my fantasy world, families would read this one like a poem a night after they’d light their candle and it would be sort of like a meditative, something to think about.

For information, visit laurelsnyder.com.