Wow, what a hidden treasure of a book! This was incredible and I loved every minute of it. Emi Watanabe Cohen may be a new favorite! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

Eleven-year-old Faye Meisel and her older brother, Shiloh, are surprised when their grandfather sends Shiloh a slab of clay for his bar mitzvah. Their Zeyde is a golemcrafter, and he wants to teach his grandchildren the craft. The siblings are driven to NYC to spend spring break with Zeyde. But at night, Shiloh and Faye are transported into a strange parallel world where innocent people are facing violence and bigotry.

At first, the parallel dream-world that Faye and Shiloh visit seems fun, like something in a fantasy story. They meet people who speak to them in "Effalese," a pidgin language the siblings created that has elements of both Japanese and Hebrew. It turns out, though, that there is something much darker going on.

Overall, this was a wonderful, thought-provoking book that blends multiple genres. It's part magical realism, part portal fantasy, part historical fiction. There are a lot of references to fairy tales and other stories that Faye and Shiloh grew up on. I wish there was a better resolution to the bullying, but I'm glad the book didn't just focus on that. 4 and a half out of 5 stars.

This was a very sweet and emotional story, It did a very good job of conveying information and emotions in an easily understandable way, without veering into appearing as preachy or as if it were infodumping. The 3 main characters, Faye, Shiloh and Zeyde, were all very fleshed out and felt like real people, which helped the story feel very immersive. While the beginning was more of a medium pace, the rest of the story flowed very fast, which is ideal for middle grade readers.
My one main issue with the book is that some of the scenes in the 'Otherworld' are perhaps verging on being a bit too graphic, particularly the one that takes place the third night. However, the presence of the scene is instrumental to the story, as it leads to Faye realising what the Otherworld is. Additionally, it is necessary for middle grade readers to learn about even the most brutal parts of history, and the way it is handled in this book is very respectful and responsible. Portraying the atrocities suffered by Jewish people over history through the lens of a sympathetic, young protagonist also helps to highlight just how horrifying these events must have been much more than a simple history lesson ever could. Ultimately, I think it'd be beneficial to add a disclaimer at the beginning of the book that informs readers that there are some depictions of violence within the story.
Overall, I wouldn't exactly say that it was a joy to read, given its dark themes, but it definitely was very interesting and had me hooked from an early point.

"As long as we have our ancestors with us, we're never alone." I cannot think of a line from a book that has ever spoken to me more than that right there. Though I don't have as much in common with Shilo or Faye as I do with some other Jewish main characters, I was completely absorbed by this story and I never wanted it to end.

Wow. Wow. Wow. This book is the future of fiction for Jewish young people, the future of middle grade fantasy, the future of Jewish fantasy in general. I could see Golemcrafters becoming an enduring classic like Over Sea, Under Stone, and I’m going to do my best to help that happen by giving a copy to every Jewish tween and middle school library I have contact with. I want every Jewish kid who in my generation would go to the school library and only see themselves represented in Holocaust books to encounter this entertaining, magical, and powerful book instead. (Hopefully alongside other great ones like Benji Zeb, Finn and Ezra, Black Bird, and The Papercutter.) Not only is this book so deep and complex and beautiful when it comes to the topics of Jewish legacy and ancestry in general, it’s such a well-written page-turner that I read it in an afternoon.

The story is told from the POV of 11-year-old Faye, daughter of a Jewish dad and a Japanese-American mom, and sister to 13-year-old Shiloh, who has just become a Bar Mitzvah. The two siblings have been having a hard time finding their place at their Boston school, their peers declaring them too Jewish, not Jewish enough, too Asian, not Asian enough. Then Shiloh receives a strange Bar Mitzvah gift in the mail - a box of clay from an estranged relative, their father’s father, whom the children have never met. It turns out the clay relates to a special legacy that’s been in their family for generations, and the next thing they know, both siblings are off to New York with their Zeyde (grandfather) for a headspinning mixture of magic lessons and snore-inducing history lectures.

Every night when the children go to sleep, however, they wake up in another world. A world where the sun doesn’t stay fixed in the sky, where the place and time keep changing, and where some of the people speak Effalese, a made-up childhood language combining Japanese and Hebrew that only Faye and Shiloh know. There is fear and violence in this world, and Faye and Shiloh begin to wonder if their newly discovered family legacy is the key to setting things right.

So that’s the beginning of the plot but trust me, whatever you think is going to happen next in this story, there is no way you can predict it all! But every twist and turn still felt so cohesive, both from a literary perspective and as a Jewish reader journeying with Faye and Shiloh on a trip that involved as many internal shifts in identity and emotion as it did unexpected events.

I think this was a perfect book for an adult reader who is open to a young narrator; Faye’s voice felt youthful but in an old-soul kind of way (which is part of her character). The extent of the violence - there aren’t any really drawn-out graphic scenes but there are a significant number of Bad Things that happen (nothing close to SA though) - makes me wonder how young of a reader this would work for. But then I think back to all the Holocaust stuff I read when I was young and remember that kids can handle more than we think as long as it’s contextualized.

If you’re reading this review to decide about whether this book is appropriate for your middle grade or teen kid, I guess I would consider how much violence they’ve already been exposed to in books and television. To give you an idea, the most disturbing thing (in my opinion) that happens in the book is when some children who we don’t know are thrown off a roof and their bleeding bodies land next to Faye when she’s in the other world. But I have to say at the same time that none of the violence feels gratuitous and it’s very important to the unfolding of the story.

If I have to come up with a critique of the book, I would say that the conclusion might not be pat enough for some young readers who are seeking out stories where good always triumphs over evil and all problems can be solved with magic. But for me, this is one of the things that made Golemcrafters so unique and important. As a young Jewish reader I would have come away from this book with a LOT to think about.

Thank you to Levine Querido for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

I guess it's been a minute since I read a middle grade book because it took me a minute to get used to the quick acceptance of the supernatural and unusual. But don't let the middle grade genre fool you. There are some brutal moments in this book.

Faye and her brother, Shiloh, are surprised at a gift for Shiloh's bar mitzvah - a box of clay. They are even more surprised when their father's estranged father shows up. He is not happy that his grandchildren have not been brought up in the old ways, the traditions passed down for generations. Their mother convinces their father, however, to let them go with their grandfather because (how fortuitous) it is school break.

While their grandfather tries to teach them golemcraft and life lessons, Faye and Shiloh find that they are in another place, antoher time. Faye is determined to help her friends that they meet there, and once she finds that she is a powerful golemcrafter, her plan is to use that in the other place. But things don't go quite as planned, and Faye ends up not even wanting her talent.

Can her grandfather, her brother, and their ancestors convince her that she needs to use her talent, not shy away from it?

This ended up being quite the intense book, and while the character- and world-building may be somewhat lacking, I doubt many people don't know the history that led to this point in time, so it's not like it creates confusion. The real gem is the sibling relationship between Faye and Shiloh, which I thought was adequately and compassionately portrayed, from their rivalries to their protectiveness.

I do wish that there had been more closure regarding the father and the grandfather, and I wish that the golem(s) had played a bigger part, but it was a beautiful story nonetheless.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc! This was very Jewish and very cute. I do have personal critiques (I wish this had more Jewish joy), but overall this is a must-read for ethnic and/or religious Jews, be it children or adults. It helped me feel more connected to my own Jewishness, even though I am mainly ethnically Jewish and not typically religious. I don’t know Hebrew, and I seldom go to temple, but I identify with our pain and our joy, and I think all of us can find something in here. Very cute, and I want my own golem, dammit. -4 stars (of David)

Golemcrafters: a magical tradition steeped in Jewish folklore, creating powerful golems from clay

Balancing struggles of fitting in at school with an adventure in another magical world
Explores heritage of Japanese and Jewish background.

Loved seeing a children's story with these elements!