What’s the scoop on pub­lish­ing? What Jew­ish books are agents, edi­tors, and pub­lish­ers espe­cial­ly excit­ed for us to read? JBC’s series Book­Watch is here to answer these fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions. Each month, a pub­lish­ing insid­er writes an email to intro­duce them­selves, give us a behind-the-scenes look at their work, and tell us about forth­com­ing Jew­ish books they can’t wait to ush­er into the world.

Hel­lo, there! I’m Jill Roth­stein, the head librar­i­an at JBI Library. Before that, I was the chief librar­i­an for the New York Pub­lic Library’s Braille and Talk­ing Book Library; and before that, I sang and danced and poured glit­ter over things as a children’s librarian. 

I love work­ing with books and talk­ing to both pro­lif­ic read­ers and reluc­tant ones still search­ing for the title that will hook them. I also espe­cial­ly love con­nect­ing peo­ple with books if they don’t typ­i­cal­ly have access to them. At JBI Library, we pro­vide Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture in audio, braille, and large print to read­ers who are blind, have low vision, have read­ing dis­abil­i­ties such as dyslex­ia, or have a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty that makes it hard for them to read a stan­dard print book. And if peo­ple can’t afford the nec­es­sary tech­nol­o­gy or have trou­ble nav­i­gat­ing it, we address those chal­lenges, too. We offer free, sim­ple audio­book play­ers or refre­sh­able braille dis­plays so they can stay con­nect­ed and engaged with their cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty through enter­tain­ing sto­ries and sacred texts. 

We all need words — words with which to escape into brave alter egos, words in which to find our real selves reflect­ed, words to expand our great­est imag­in­ings into even greater ones. We need words that give us joy and weird­ness and intrigu­ing con­fu­sion, and that ground us in val­i­dat­ing descrip­tions of the world around us. 

It’s impor­tant to me to include a vari­ety of view­points, expe­ri­ences, and back­grounds in JBI Library’s col­lec­tion of titles, to think about the needs of peo­ple of dif­fer­ent ages and who have dif­fer­ent dis­abil­i­ties. We’re excit­ed to be start­ing a project to record and braille graph­ic nov­els with image descrip­tions for indi­vid­u­als who are blind. Our first two will be Bar­ry Deutsch’s Here­ville: How Mir­ka Got Her Sword (about just anoth­er twelve-year-old Ortho­dox Jew­ish Girl who wants to fight drag­ons) and Liana Finck’s Let There Be Light: The Real Sto­ry of Her Cre­ation. We offer every­thing from com­plex reli­gious thought and Jew­ish noir to mod­ern Brook­lyn mem­oirs and romances. And we also offer sacred texts for all denom­i­na­tions and philoso­phies. We have a part­ner­ship with the Jew­ish poet­ry orga­ni­za­tion Yet­zi­rah, which cel­e­brates fab­u­lous mod­ern Jew­ish poet­ry through work­shops, dis­cus­sions, and an expand­ing col­lec­tion of Jew­ish poet­ry avail­able in audio and braille. We are also work­ing with PJ Library and pub­lish­ers of chil­dren’s books to offer more twin­view books (braille trans­paren­cy over print­ed pic­ture books). As part of anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion, we are record­ing a new mem­oir from a Holo­caust survivor.

I’m proud to be part of a team that is con­stant­ly ask­ing not just What else can we offer?, but also Who else can we include? We believe that access to books and Jew­ish life should nev­er be blocked by dis­abil­i­ty, tech­nol­o­gy skills, or income. Sto­ries are for every­one — and so is com­mu­ni­ty. Because when more peo­ple can read, reflect, and con­nect, our entire world grows stronger.