Process Talk with Jen: Caroline Kusin Pritchard and Sidura Ludwig on Tender Jewish Family Traditions

[Posted by Jen Breach]

[Jen] When I saw that Caroline Kusin Pritchard and Sidura Ludwig, two generous and insightful writers, had books coming out within months of each other, I pounced at the chance to turn an interview post into a conversation.

Caroline, Where is Poppy? (illustrated by Dana Wulfekotte) is based on your beloved grandfather, who has passed, and his Passover seder table. And Sidura, you make challah every week for Shabbat, just like the characters in Rising (illustrated by Sophia Vincent Guy). How did you  turn these tender family traditions into picture books that intertwine family and religion?

[Sidura] I wrote my first draft of Rising right at the beginning of the pandemic. Everything about our routines was thrown up in the air. Every day felt the same, but also filled with the anxiety of so much unknown. The one thing that didn’t change for us was Shabbat. I still got up early on a Friday to make my challah dough, still made the foods my family associates with Shabbat, still lit the candles at the appropriate time on Friday night and sat down for a festive meal with my family. It felt normal and anchoring, at a time when nothing else did. And I was so grateful for our practice.

Rising came to me out of that sense of gratitude, when I was thinking about not only the process of making challah, but what it means to me spiritually, how it connects me with my community and my relationship with God. What I wanted to do in this book was really explore the process of practice when it comes to participating in tradition, and how the physical act of practice can connect us to something greater, be it spiritual, communal, etc.

Photo courtesy of Caroline Kusin Pritchard

[Caroline] Oh, Sidura, I love that! Yes, the very act of participating in tradition connects us to something communal and something greater. I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but I think that’s exactly why I turned to tradition after my grandfather Poppy died. He led our family’s Passover seder for 72 years straight. I grew up with all the child-centered delights that came with Passover— from passing notes in my haggadah to wrestling my cousins in search of the afikomen. But I was also deeply drawn to the seriousness of purpose that came with dutifully performing the rituals every year, and Poppy’s fingerprints were all over each of them.

That’s why this tradition became such a meaningful container for my grief. So in the three months between Poppy’s death and our Seder, I wrote the first iteration of this story as a surprise for my family, a way to show our young kids how their great grandfather would always be with them, vibrating within these shared rituals.

Since the book’s release, I’ve connected with Jewish families who relate to the experience of an intergenerational Seder after a beloved elder is gone. But I’ve also heard from a kid who was heartbroken during an Easter egg hunt because his aunt recently died and she used to hide eggs in the best spots… or another kid who missed her big sister who was away at college during her birthday party. They saw their own heartache alongside the book’s main character’s, and I’d like to think they ultimately felt a sense of hope, too. I never approached this story as a backdoor way of teaching about the Passover seder. But focusing on the details and texture of the seder was necessary to access the heart of the story, which is a kid who really, really misses her grandpa.

[Jen] Rising is as cozy as warm tea and fresh bread on a quiet morning. Where Is Poppy? is as boisterous as a holiday with the extended family. How do you fold tone and language together to reinforce theme?

[Caroline] Ohhhh, I love thinking about how tone and language reinforce each other. The story only works if the voice feels authentically kid-centered. Instead of narrating disappointment or heartbreak, I worked to express that overwhelm in run-on sentences like “I want to keep fighting and healing and singing but… Poppy isn’t here.” I also thought hard about how to get as much mileage as possible with the refrain “Poppy isn’t here,” which creates an increasingly despairing rhythm for the reader.

[Jen] It really does.

 [Caroline] And when the refrain finally gets flipped on its head my hope is that kids can experience that triumphant release rather than be explicitly told that’s how they should feel.

To be real, though… while I did my best to communicate tone and theme through language, I think the real magic is Dana’s illustrations. Her masterful use of bluish purple from the beginning to the end of the story is remarkable!

[Jen] Agreed. The choices she made about that simple palette are perfectly on theme. Sidura?

Photo courtesy of Sidura Ludwig

[Sidura] The act of making challah is one that requires time and patience. You can’t rush it. Rising leans into the stillness and presence I feel when I’m making challah on my own in the early morning before the rest of my family has got up. But it’s also for me about promise: when I make challah on a Friday morning, it’s the first sign that Shabbat is coming, that Shabbat pause. There’s both the anticipation of Shabbat, but also the excitement and sense of purpose in making something that will be an integral part of the family’s Shabbat observance.

[Jen] In both your books the past and future are intertwined–tradition and change kind of spiral together–and both are told in the present tense. Can you talk about how conscious, or not, these choices were?

[Sidura] Definitely wasn’t a conscious choice for me! I think I landed on the present tense because making challah is something the family in the book does every week. I wanted the text to reflect the commitment the family makes on an ongoing basis: the promise that these connections to family, faith and community will continue in part through this weekly ritual. So the present tense is important because the story is ongoing. The family makes challah again this week, even as they cradle their new baby! And they will continue to make challah and prepare for Shabbat again and again.

 [Caroline] I love how you describe the present tense as a sort of promise for the family’s love shared today and on Shabbats to come. For Where is Poppy?, I knew whatever tense I chose needed to be in service of the urgency within the story. I tried it in past tense as an exercise, but I couldn’t quite nail the tension. In this particular story, I think the present tense gives the reader permission to sink into the afikomen-like hunt that we’re on together to find Poppy, to hear that ticking clock a bit more clearly.

[Uma, chiming in] Lovely insights about lovely books, thank you, Caroline and Sidura. And thanks to Jen for hosting this lively conversation.