Susan Tar­cov grew up in Pel­ham Park­way, a Jew­ish neigh­bor­hood in the Bronx. The boys in her class would leave school ear­ly to go to Hebrew school. Tar­cov would have loved to go too but girls didn’t go to Hebrew school in that time or in that place. She stud­ied Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture in col­lege and grad­u­ate school and worked as an edi­tor of schol­ar­ly books at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press. And now final­ly she writes pic­ture books on Jew­ish themes, mak­ing up for the Jew­ish edu­ca­tion she didn’t have as a child.