FREE/BARGAIN - Children's, YA - 2015

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Sorry, no, I haven't read Ruth Benjamin's freebies (I have a low read-rate for KDP stuff in general), and I should probably mention at this point that I'm an atheist from a secular background who lives in one of the most agnostic regions of Canada and the most acquaintance I've had with any religion in the past decade or so has been walking past the Scientology centre downtown on my way to the central library and I really just post what I see that pops up free that has a recognizable (non-self-)publisher and/or author with decent provenance in the form of previous trad-pub credentials.

That said, if you're willing to consider a few quasi-recommendations for Jewish-themed literary works I've personally read (or watched in adapted form) and enjoyed, I'll put the ones which immediately spring to mind under the cut (since it gets a bit long, and this is technically off-topic for the Kids/YA thread, though I'll mention that Mordecai Richler also wrote one of the classic Canadian children's storybooks):

Spoiler:

Disclaimer: none of these are dedicated Jewish religiously observant works in the same way that we have the dedicated Christian publisher freebies, and some of them are written by non-Jews. But all of them involve what seem to me to be prominent Jewish-background characters and themes where their background seems to be very important to the setting/plot, and IMHO as a secular humanist atheist, seem to be handled in a reasonably respectful manner, though YMMV.

1. The Magicians of Night by Barbara Hambly (ISFDB, Wikipedia), 2nd in her Sun-Cross duology (it was actually meant to go to more books, but she never got around to writing the 3rd) of fantasy/real-world crossover. This is a self-contained story that draws back on stuff established in the 1st book, but can be read standalone as a WWII adventure, and stars a wizard from an alternate universe who's been tricked into working for the Nazi Occult Bureau and tries to find a means of escape, with the help of a Polish-American Jewish woman who herself is trying to find and free her Kabbalist father who's another of the Occult Bureau's prisoners.
   
   According to the note in the back, while Hambly herself isn't Jewish, she does have distant relatives on one side of the family who left Poland just in time. This is an Open Road Media title and it tends to go on sale periodically (I got mine during one of their CyberMonday sale promos, although I've also owned it in paperback for some time, since Barbara Hambly is one of my favourite authors) and is couponable otherwise.
2. The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals by Ann (ISFDB, Wikipedia) & Jeff VanderMeer (ISFDB, Wikipedia), which is Exactly What It Says In The Title. IIRC, Ann is Jewish, Jeff is not, and they argue (Jeff in the form of his persona as "The Evil Monkey") about which monsters make suitable munchies for observant Jews and why (the Chupacabra is not, but the vegetable lamb is). This is amazingly funny and rather educational for the uninitiated as to several moderately obscure mythological/folklore/urban legend critters, and kosher food laws as well. This was part of the Jeff VanderMeer's Weird Fiction bundle from StoryBundle.
3. Briar Rose by Jane Yolen (ISFDB, Wikipedia). This was part of Terri Windling & Ellen Datlow's line of fairy-tale retellings, this one a post-Holocaust resetting of Sleeping Beauty, as a woman begins to retrace her roots after her grandmother's death and finding out just how much of her family history she doesn't know about. This is really very good and I highly recommend it (if you try only one book out of this list, it should be this one); Wikipedia says it was a Nebula finalist and has a Mythopoeic Prize.
4. Peony by Nobel Prize-winner Pearl S. Buck (Wikipedia, and Wikipedia entry for the novel itself). This is an historical literary novel about the Kaifeng Jews of 19th century China, and deals with themes of separation and assimilation and intermarriage and maintaining faith despite outside not-so-much-pressure-from-alienation-as-apathy-in-the-face-of-acceptance. This is only a partial recommend as I'm only about halfway through this, and the prose phrasing seems a bit old-timey and stilted (this may or may not be a deliberate narrative stylistic choice to give some added historical flavour), but so far it's been pretty interesting and seems like it'll conclude promisingly. This was a $1.99 sale title from Open Road Media a few months ago and they'll probably drop it on promo again at some point.
5. The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick by Canadian author Morley Torgov (Wikipedia) has been a freebie giveaway from re-publisher BevEditions a few times during Smashwords' Read An Ebook Week annual sale. This is a Jewish experience coming-of-age novel which won the 1983 Stephen Leacock Memorial Award for Humour, and was adapted into a movie (Wikipedia) which gets shown on CBC every so often. I haven't actually read the book even though I've got the freebie, but I did see a good chunk of the film (but not the entire thing, IIRC, as my viewing was interrupted), and it is pretty funny, with some poignant moments, and was highly recommended by some other MR members when it first came free a couple of years ago.
6. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (Wikipedia), another Jewish Canadian novelist, and one of our top literary figures. This is another work I know more from the film (Wikipedia) than the actual novel (Wikipedia entry; again, a Jewish experience coming-of-age type story, though more of a bleaker coming-to-terms-with kind of thing than TOCOMG), but both are generally considered to be quite good, and the film itself won a bunch of prizes, including an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and a Canadian Film Award for Film of the Year.

Hopefully there might be something which looks like it's of interest that you'll end up enjoying.

Thanks for the suggestions, a couple of them went on my TBR!

(I was aware you are an atheist -- I also got the impression that that would not stop you from trying out a *themed* book if it sounded interesting! Right?)

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

(I was aware you are an atheist -- I also got the impression that that would not stop you from trying out a *themed* book if it sounded interesting! Right?)

I'll try anything once if it doesn't scar, and twice if it makes money!

(Okay, not really, but you're right, I don't consider mere religious or other theming to be a deal-breaking barrier to my trying out stuff, unless there are other factors involved like the creators being very unsavoury persons whom I wouldn't want to give my time, much less my money, which is why I will never read or post certain freebies from Focus on the Family, no matter how much I like Viking stuff otherwise.)

In case The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick was one of the ones that made your TBR, it's now 75% off as a Read an Ebook Week special from Bev Editions @ Smashwords.

You can also get a freebie of of a Jewish-themed mystery novel by Howard Engel (Wikipedia), who has an Arthur Ellis Award (our top national crime writing prize) as well as an Order of Canada: The Whole Megillah, and Lita Rose-Betcherman's (one of our award-winning history writers) non-fiction about the rise of 30s fascism in Canada, is also 75% off with coupon, if you're interested, and the late Mordecai Richler gave this high praise: The Swastika and the Rose

I think I might have one or two giftable Morley Torgov BevEditions books left from last year's RAEBW when they were freebies-via-coupon (not TOCOGM, though), and if you really want to try his writing before you maybe-buy, please let me know and I can dig around in my email archives and see if I still have them and didn't send them off to another MR member like IIRC doing to the Engel mystery last year.

Also, a few more mystery/fantasy/graphic novel recommends if you're interested (some YA-ish or by YA-writing authors like Esther Friesner, but it would be pushing the point of this thread to post the lot as-is, so under the cut they go):

Spoiler:

• Search the Seven Hills aka The Quirinal Hill Affair by Barbara Hambly once again. This is a murder mystery set in Ancient Rome which, while it focuses a lot more on early Christianity, has as a very important plot-behind-the-plot point the differences between early Christians and Jews and the typical Roman perception of them being pretty much the same, even though they're not, and Hambly is herself now a history teacher and Did The Research on her stuff.
  
  This is one of my favourites of her works, and really quite good, IMHO, and I wish she'd written more in this setting. It's another couponable Open Road reprint which sometimes goes to deep-discount sale.
• Many of the urban fantasy works by Esther Friesner (ISFDB, Wikipedia), which you'd probably have to hunt down in used paperbacks, sorry. She's one of my favourite humorous fantasy authors and often incorporates New York secularized Jewish cultural attitudes into her characters and settings.
• If you're in the mood for more humorous fantasy, the adventures of Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson (Wikipedia) by the late George Alec Effinger (ISFDB, Wikipedia). Effinger himself is not of Jewish background, IIRC, but he had a great deal of respect and affection for the character he created of a New York Jewish-American Princess who steps into the worlds of and satirizes a whole bunch of sword & sorcery pulp fantasy tropes. From the other Abrahamic religions if you're interested, Effinger also wrote the really good Budayeen science fiction series with Muslim themes, which netted him some Hugo and Nebula wins. He was married to Barbara Hambly for a while, and in her historical urban fantasy novel set in silent-film-era Hollywood Bride of the Rat God (also an ORM reprint, and also highly recommended if you're interested in Hollywood cast & crew vs an ancient Manchurian demon), there's an expy of him as the Jewish cameraman Alec Mindelbaum, who's a major supporting character.
  
  Budayeen is e-printed by Open Road, unfortunately, I don't think Maureen Birnbaum has made it to e-book (except for the one short story that's collected in a Baen anthology), but that it'll one day happen as ORM keeps digging into his back-catalogue.
• If you're willing to try some French bandes déssinées available in English translation (no idea what the availability on these would be like in your part of the presumably-US, but they're pretty common here in my part of Canada), Joann Sfar (Wikipedia) has some really good specifically Jewish-themed historical life experience BDs (tween/YA-friendly, though not specifically targeted towards them).
  
  Klezmer is based a bit on his own Ashkenazic ancestry and how his great-grandparents or whatever got together, IIRC, but IMHO while that was pretty decent, by far the better of his works is The Rabbi's Cat, based on the Sephardic Jewish community in Algeria. This has been adapted to an animated film suitable for showing to the kiddies (Wikipedia), though I've no idea if you can get an English-language dub or even subtitles should you need them. It's one of my personal favourite BDs and I highly recommend it.

[ATDrake]

Free from the author('s republishing consortium) via KDP Select @ Amazon:

Even More Like Annabel by Alan Davidson, continuing the humorous tween adventures of the titular British schoolgirl, this installment originally out from Granada in 1985.

"There'll be a reign of terror," Annabel tells Kate and Sheena, when the horrible Julia Channing is made a Monitor. And she's right. So now it's going to be up to The Silent Three to step out of the pages of an old comic and try to give Julia the fright of her life. As long as they're not recognised, of course...?

And in the second of these two delightful comedies, Annabel takes on the Town Council over a condemned tree and makes a very unexpected TV debut.

Even more like Annabel!

[eschwartz]

Thanks for the suggestions, will see if there is anything I like -- but at this point we may have just about pushed the thread too far.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the SF/Fantasy megathread, since there's a YA in there for those looking for LGBT-friendly books potentially suitable for teen readers:

Free from the author's republishing consortium via KDP Select @ Amazon: Torch Song by Shelley Singer, an apparently YA sci-fi dystopian adventure thriller starring an apparently lesbian mercenary, originally out from Five Star in 2007.

[Manabi]

Google Play has Suzanne Collin's Mockingjay, book three of The Hunger Games Trilogy, on sale for $3.99.

It's also been price-matched at Amazon, but not at Barnes & Noble or Kobo.

[ATDrake]

Free from the author('s republishing consortium) via KDP Select @ Amazon:

Me, Jill Robinson!: The Television Quiz by Anne Digby, another installment in her series of humorous tween adventure novels starring the eponymous schoolgirl, originally out from Dragon in 1983 and picked up for Penguin's Puffin imprint in 1990.

Jill's adventures begin with all the excitement of a family move. New town, new house, new school, new everything! There, before long, she also finds herself with a new best friend. And Melinda Hill just happens to be the worst behaved girl in the class -- which pitches Jill into more drama. It's all to do with a television quiz....

[Froide]

This month's Kindle for Samsung freebies selection includes a YA book. If interested, you may click the link to see details.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the DRM-free megathread, where Wildside Press' Tuesday freebie is for vintage children's adventures written circa 1930:

Tahara Among the African Tribes by psychic researcher Harold Sherman, a set of globe-trotting adventures with supernatural elements in it

[GtrsRGr8]

On their website, Tyndale has a free pdf of The Imagination Station: Voyage with the Vikings, Book 1. It is 114 pages long.

The book is written by Marianne Hering and Paul McCusker, and illustrated by David Hohn. Speaking of illustrations, the ones in this pdf apparently are all black-and-white, although I have a feeling that they were originally in color.

Here is the direct link: http://www.tyndale.com/blog/wp-conte...ithVikings.pdf.

[Froide]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

On their website, Tyndale has a free pdf of The Imagination Station: Voyage with the Vikings, Book 1. It is 114 pages long.

The book is written by Marianne Hering and Paul McCusker, and illustrated by David Hohn. Speaking of illustrations, the ones in this pdf apparently are all black-and-white, although I have a feeling that they were originally in color.

Here is the direct link: http://www.tyndale.com/blog/wp-conte...ithVikings.pdf.

Yep, the original's in color. The Kindle edition was free at Amazon.com on June 2, 2014.
.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Froide

Yep, the original's in color. The Kindle edition was free at Amazon.com on June 2, 2014.
.

Thanks. Maybe someone who didn't get it in color might want to at least have this one. No worries, either way.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the Comics megathread:

The new Humble Bundle is for Jim Henson works (of Muppets fame), and there's some kid-level Fraggle Rock and other comics in there.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the DRM-free megathread:


Humble School's Out Book Bundle presented by No Starch Press has large selection of kid-friendly LEGO and teach-your-kids computer programming guides, and a cartoony illustrated guide to the periodic table of elements, for the aspiring chemists in the audience.

[ATDrake]

X-link to the SF/Fantasy megathread since there's some YA-compatible Arthurian fantasy and a vintage classic YA sci-fi adventure:

Bargain @ $2.99 each from Sourcebooks (couponable @ Kobo):

• Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key, the 1968 YA psychic teens novel which was the basis for the popular Disney film franchise
• 2 novels out of her Down the Long Wind trilogy of Arthurian historically-based fantasy by Gillian Bradshaw
• 3 novels in her otherworldly fey Arthurian fantasy trilogy by Anne Eliot Crompton