Zibby interviews award-winning author Ilana Kurshan about her luminous, heartfelt new book, CHILDREN OF THE BOOK: A Memoir of Reading Together. Ilana shares how reading aloud to her five children—from GOODNIGHT MOON to CHARLOTTE’S WEB—became deeply intertwined with her lifelong practice of reading from the Torah. She reflects on how books create a common family language, forge intimacy, and shift in meaning as we revisit them through different stages of life. She also opens up about raising her children in Jerusalem, the role of literature in calming fears, and how parenthood itself can feel like a sacred journey mirrored in biblical stories.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Ilana. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked with Zibby to talk about children of the book, a memoir of Reading Together. Congratulations. 

Ilana: Thank you. 

Zibby: This was such a beautiful book. Oh my gosh. I got to relive all of my reading with my own kids, with my mom. I mean, it was just so nice. Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about the inspiration for the, for the book.

Ilana: So this book I wrote, it's a memoir. It's a memoir about the closeness forge when family life unfolds against a backdrop of reading together. And I, in each part of the book, I explore the connections between the various books I've read with my children over time, and the Torah, the five books of Moses, uh, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, which is the book that Jews never really stopped reading.

Um, because, um, part of what inspired me, um, was that in traditional Jewish practice, we read from the Torah every week in synagogue over the course, starting in the fall, shortly after the start of the Jewish New Year with the book of Genesis. Then proceeding weekly through the entire Bible, the entire five books, most until we come to the book of Deuteronomy the following fall and start over again.

So I've been engaging in this practice for my entire life. Um, I read from the Torah, I chant from the Torah every week. Regularly in synagogue and I write in my book, my memoir about how all the books I've read with my children over time, everything from Goodnight Moon and the Very Hungry Caterpillar to Charlotte's Web Little Women, how all these books really unfold in the context of the ancient story of the Bible.

And it, this really emerged from discovering that as a parent, as a mother, though, most of the books I was reading fell into two categories. Um. One were the children's books that my kids always wanted me to keep reading over and over again. And I read aloud a lot to my children. This was in part because I'm raising them in Israel.

I am American born and it was very important for me to impart to my children the richness of the English language literary culture that I grew up with. Um, so I really. Have from, from birth, and truly even in utero. I'm always been reading out loud, always been reading out loud to my children, but also because I am constantly reading from the Torah and chanting from the Torah.

I started to hear those books in conversation with one another. And so that was how the book, the idea for the book came to me. I would say the arc of the book is really, as I describe it from, from Paradise to the Promised Land. Um, paradise being the very first books we read to our children when they're born, and then the Promised Land being that moment when our kids go off on their own and read books independently of us books that we may never enter ourselves, which made me think of Moses Atop of the mountain, watching as the children of Israel enter new lands and, and, and have new experiences that Moses will not have. So I guess you could say the, the book is, it's about parenthood as a sacred journey, a journey that maps out onto the Bible's narrative.

Um, and it's also an exploration of an exploration of how we learn to read our kids by by reading with them. 

Zibby: That was a really beautiful insight you had, and the story too is how reading helps you read your kids and how each one of them is so different from each other. And this is like a way you all get to know more about each other by the things that you read and the insights and how you change as a reader too, from when you read it the first time to when you're a grownup. 

Ilana: Yes. Part of what I've discovered is so many books that I thought of in a certain way, from the way I remember them, from my childhood read so differently when I re-read them as a parent and suddenly focused on the experience of the parents. So, you know, I was recently rereading reading with my children A Wrinkle In Time, which I always thought of as a story, was probably my favorite book growing up. And I always thought of it as a story about a girl in search of her missing father and traveling through space time to find him and, and discovering all the, the power of, of love as a source of connection.

Um. I read it this time, and I mean, so, so my husband has been on a sabbatical all year, um, in, actually in the far east, so very far from home. And I read this story about this mother who's trying to hold her family together, not knowing where her husband is. And it was, it was just a totally different story from the mother's perspective.

And so I've had that experience also discovering how I'm so much older than most of the parents in the books I'm reading to my children has also just been. That's, that's been an interesting experience in its own right. But yeah, just the way books read so differently with every encounter with them, and I think that's such a testament to rich literature, rich literature, and, and, and, and beautifully and deeply written books or books that every time you come to them. You discover something different and it's, it's never the same book with each rereading. And I would even say, I think that's true. So I have five children and I've read the same books aloud with each of them. I'm actually now reading, just tonight reading Charlotte's Web with my youngest who is five and a half.

And I've now read this book five times, um, with each of my children. And I will say that every time children notice something different and you learn about your child through what their insights are, and it's sort of a controlled experiment because it's the same book and yet it doesn't read the same way each time.

So that's part of, that's part of what's made for such a rich experience. Um, sharing books with my kids. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, you also show in the book just how many places and how often you, yourself are reading. I mean, I felt like I read a lot, but you are just constantly reading, you know, books on the windowsill, books on the stove, books everywhere.

Just pick it up all the time. What, how do you fit reading in and where are some of. Places that maybe people should be reading? 

Ilana: Um, well, so I'll say that traditionally when, when Jews study sacred text, there's something we use, it's called a stender, like a stand that you put like big, heavy toes on. And um, and I had a, I had a stand like this and I used to use it to study.

Sacred books. But when I had less time to do that, when my kids were really young, I repurposed that Stender and I put it on our kitchen table and we would just support the books. We'd read through meals. Um, I read aloud to my kids. I never ate while my kids were eating. That was impossible. It was like running a free Rin and Ring Circus to feed them.

But I read out loud it every meal as a way of, I really, I, I think of reading out loud as a parenting strategy, like it's just a way. Of making sure that everything's not gonna fall apart and everyone's attention is focused on something that's not, you know, how much food is on someone else's plate? Who got more dessert, who threw the spaghetti, or you know, all the things that kids like to do at at meal times to avoid actually eating.

My kids focus best, um, when I reading time. We have a lot of food related, food related favorite books. Probably chief among them is, um, the Seven Silly Eaters by Maryanne Hoberman because I always call my kids the silly Eaters. But anyway, yes, so we read a lot at Mealtimes and we've just graduated from our stroller, but I always kept big piles, stacks of books under the stroller and I would vary the books all the time so that.

You never know when a kid is gonna nearly have a meltdown at the park, and you can save the moment by distracting them with a story. There are also certain books that we come to sort of after, after a child would have a tantrum, there were certain books that always come my kids down. So it was really just for me.

I found that I could be a better parent when I had. Books at my disposal, like waiting for one kid to finish a swimming lesson and the other kid wants to jump in the water. And I'm like, no, no, no. Or, or when my son is, was afraid to get his first haircut and I read him the story. Um. Ella Kazoo will not brush her hair, which is an Australian children's book about a girl who refuses to get a haircut and or dandelion another haircut.

But there are, you know, various mop top. There are various books that I just had for certain moments in our books that came up in certain situations. And I just found that having those books available to me really helped me. Um, I remember I once had a friend who told me, um, that the best way to, the best way to get your kids to be readers was to always be you always yourself should be reading around them. And I remember thinking that was like the craziest thing. Like I was a full-time reader before I became a full-time mother, and suddenly I discovered that I had signed on for a job that was incompatible with what I love to do most. Like it was so hard to read.

Well, and I did try, I mean, I, I read aloud to all my children, whatever I was reading when I was breastfeeding them. I used to read to them as they were when they were sleeping. I would read out loud 'cause I always felt so guilty. Just, you know, as, as you know, I always felt guilty not being physically present with my children.

So I thought, well, I'll just bring them into the story that I'm in. Um, so I read a lot to my children while they were in their infancy. Um, the first books they heard were not picture books or board books, or they were whatever novels I was reading at the time. But when my friend said this to me that the best way to read with your, you know, to raise your kids as readers is to read all the time I thought I can't do that, but I do. I do read to them all the time, and I hope, I hope, I hope that you know, that that is having an effect on them, I hope. Um, it, I will say that, that it has resulted in a common language of literary illusions where I feel like a lot of the connections that I have with my children are illusions to books that we have read together.

So. Um, you know, I remember we, I read with my son, I, I, I read with my, well, I read with all my kids the, the picture books by James Marshall, the Ms. Nelson books. 

Zibby: Yes. 

Ilana: And my youngest was, I think he was like two or three as we were one summer. We were reading these books over and over. And, um, there's a refrain.

And this ominous refrain in the Ms. Nelson is missing book. It's that a, a book about a teacher who dresses up as a, as a cruel substitute teacher to draw, draw her students into line again when they're misbehaving. Um, and every time this means substitute walks in, they see a shadow on the door, and the author, the, the, the, the, the book reads suddenly sa slowly the knob turns.

At one point there was a moment of like, I forget, like someone was knocking on the door and we didn't know who it was in the middle of dinner, and my kids were like, who could it be? Who could be at our door? And my son, who was two or three at the time, he did not understand this line, but he knew enough to understand.

He said slowly the knob turned. And we all burst out laughing because he didn't know what he was saying. But he, he had this, he, he knew it was appropriate in the context because of this, because of the books we're reading. Or, I remember one time it was taking my kids to the dentist. And we had read over and over again this book, um, uh, a William Ste book, um, Dr. DeSoto, about a fox who comes to a mouse dentist, and the mouse has to find a way of, you know, outwitting the fox so that he can actually treat the fox without being eaten by the fox. And, um, on the way to the dentist, my son, it was the first time he was, we were just dragging him along my youngest child, as the older kids were going for their, for their hygienist appointments.

And my son said, um, he said, I'm so excited to see all the animals at the dentist. And I realized that, you know, because he, the only time he'd ever heard the word dentist was when we were talking about animal stories. And so we assumed that a dentist office was gonna look like a zoo in some way. Um, so anyway, so, so yeah. So I think reading in all context for sure. Um, but, but I think also what I'm trying to explore is, or, or, or, or reflect on in the book is how when you have this practice of constantly being immersed in shared texts, those texts become. Become a, a common language and a sort of, they forage intimacy within a family.

Zibby: I love that. And I try to do that too, like have them catch you reading. That was advice I, I had early on in my parenting. Um, my older, my kids are now from 18 to to 10, but I love like reading whatever I'm reading and sharing some great plots with them. Like I feel like that gets them excited. You know, like, oh, what's that book mom?

As opposed to like, I'm just doing this thing on my own. Like every story is one to be shared, right? 

Ilana: Yes. 

Zibby: And you can all get behind a good, a good plot. So. 

Ilana: Yes. Yes, yes. And sometimes when my kids wanna do something with me and I'm in the middle of reading, I'll say to them, no, but I'll, I'll read you whatever it is that I'm reading.

And they actually really do listen and ask questions. And sometimes it's not always so appropriate for them to be listening into whatever it's, I'm reading. But, um, but I do find that it's a way to sort of, there's something very intimate about, um, reading the same text at the same time as someone else.

Whether you're reading that book to someone or they're looking over your shoulder or whatever it is. Your minds are in the same place and it creates a real, a real sense of closeness. 

So, yeah, i, I do that as well.

Zibby: I think it's also really helpful for putting them to sleep, especially like one of my kids.

Like anytime I start reading what I'm reading, not like one of his favorite books. I think because yes, I am relaxed. One of the things I think makes it so hard for bedtime, this is my theory now that my kids don't like struggle as much with bedtime 'cause they're older, but. We get so anxious about it, like, get to sleep, why aren't you getting to sleep?

You know, like, go, go. And once I turned bedtime into my own reading time, like all the stress went away. Like I don't care if it takes you two hours to fall asleep, I'm gonna sit here and read, and I'm gonna sit on your bed and read and I'll read to you and I'll still be calm myself. So it's almost like a parenting hack that way.

Win. 

Ilana: Yes. Yeah. 

Zibby: Win-win. 

Ilana: Yes. Absolutely. As I, I have a practice with my children where I tell them after a certain hour I'm not going to, I'm, if you want me to stay with you, I will only stay with you if I'm chanting from the Torah because I'm always have to practice chanting for reading and synagogue. So I will read out loud to them.

And when you do that, you read the same verse over and over 'cause you're trying to master them to learn them nearly by heart. Um, and so e eventually at some point, my kids get so sick of it, of hearing the same versus family again. They're like, okay, okay, you can leave now. It's okay. It's okay. But I figure like this way they're learning.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Ilana: They're learning Torah. They're getting to spend time with me. And effectively at some point they kicked me outta the room. They've had enough of me. So, um, so that too. I, I, I agree that, you know. There are many ways to, uh, to read with one's children and, and in so doing, even if you're not reading what they want you to be reading, eventually they do go to sleep or at least let you go.

So, 

Zibby: yes. Oh my gosh. Well, tell me a little bit about why you moved. I know you decided with your second husband to stay in Israel. You write about this in the book. Yeah. Um, but. How that's been. How do you feel now being in Israel? I know this is, and we don't have to discuss it, but I know you contributed to on being Jewish now and you're very open and you know, this is something that we Jewish people in the States and I know all over the place think about.

We are so concerned for everyone in Israel. Talk to me a little bit about where you are with, with the current day. 

Ilana: So I feel very, very fortunate to be living in Israel. I would say often say that. I didn't make Ali, I didn't move to Israel. I really moved to Jerusalem. I've always lived in Jerusalem, and part of what, um, part of what attracted me to living here, even though it's a very, very, very intense place to live, um, the, the Israeli poet, one of the most famous Israeli poets, Yehuda Am Mihai.

20th Century Israeli poet says, um, talks about how the air in Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams like the air over industrial cities. It's hard to breathe, he says, oh. And there's, there is a real intensity to living in this place, especially, especially right now, of course. But part of what attracted me to living in Jerusalem, um, is that it's really a place.

Where there is such a culture of, of study, um, of Jewish learning, of PE where people really commit themselves to engaging seriously with our Jewish textural tradition, which I often think of, you know, we as Jews, we don't have like. It's not like we have a royal palace with crown jewels, like our techs are really our crown jewels in our tradition.

Um, so when you walk the streets of Jerusalem, the billboards are plastered with, you know, who's giving, who's teaching what class on the weekly Torah portion, and who's going to be speaking on this holiday and where can you go to learn about this aspect of Jewish law. It's really a culture of. Of learning, learning.

And for me, that was so eye-opening for me. Actually, the, the first book that I wrote, which I wrote, I was about a seven and a half year period in my life when I first came to Israel. And I read a page of the Talmud every day. And when you do that, it's, it, there's an international program to read through the whole Talmud in seven and a half years.

You do it at the rate of a page a day, the Talmud. About 2,700 pages, the Babylonian Talmud. Um, it's a book of law of literature. It's a very, very, very, it's learning a page of Talmud. It's, it's not like reading a page of a book. It really requires a lot of intense engagement and studying commentaries. And I, I, I was able to do that and I was able to, to engage in so much learning, in part because I was living in a place where.

That was just really acceptable. At the time I was working at a literary agency. Um, I was selling foreign rights to get books translated into Hebrew from other languages and I just came into the office late two days a week 'cause I was studying, I was studying and also I began teaching, um, Talmud as well.

And it was just very acceptable. It was part of the culture that this is what people do, that people also take, people take their religious practice very seriously and their commitment to learning very seriously. Um, and so that's really affected how I've, you know, come to think of living in this place.

Also, I think, um, part of what I love so much about, about living in Israel, in spite of all the, the intensity is really living in a place where Jewish culture is national culture. So the rhythm of our days is the rhythm of the Jewish calendar, the. Vacation days for everyone in the country are, are the Jewish holidays.

You know, the stores are filled with all the foods for the upcoming holidays. The streets, the traffic, and the street slows down in advance of Shabbat. Like you really feel like you are living the rhythm of the Jewish calendar. And I think that was also part of what inspired me to engage deeply with, with Jewish text study, was really feeling like this was a place where that really made sense.

Where it really made sense to dive deep into our sources. Because, because these are the texts that have really shaped the, really shaped the way we live here. So, so that was also, that's also very inspiring to me about living in Israel. 

Zibby: Uh, yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. That's really beautiful. I feel like that gives a clearer sense than, than most descriptions.

How do you live with fear? Do you feel fear or not? You know, I spend 

Ilana: so much time trying to allay my children's fear. I will say we have read many, many books in our safe room. Even when I told my children I had a Zoom tonight, and I, I, I, you know, I told them I was going to be speaking with you and they said.

Do you think a siren might go off in the middle? Are you scared? What's gonna happen if there's a siren? 'cause I was telling them about this interview. Um, it's always, always, always in forefront in their minds. And I think that as a parent. You just realize that your role is just to be a buffer between your children and their fears, and you always, always, always just have to project an air of calmness and an even keel.

And when you do that, I don't know, to some extent, you just start to feel it. Like you just start to feel that your job is. And my children, you know, they get, I, when we're in, when we, when, when we do have to be in a safe room for whatever reason, we tend to focus on, you know, usually either I'll read to my children or they'll, they like to pray when we're in that space.

I think I wrote about this in the end. Mm-hmm. In the essay for your anthology Z that. My son, he has this, he, my youngest child always says like, we can't stop praying even for a second because if we stop praying, something terrible can happen. And he just has this. And for his idea of praying is like building out his favorite Psalms, you know, to the tunes that he's learned in school.

And we all just sing together and there's something. Very calming about that. It's almo. It's almost like reading together and being on the same page. It's like we're all reciting the same words, and somehow that just allays the fears for my children. And when they're come, I don't know. I don't know. They just like, you don't feel fear as a parent when you're so focused on keeping your children calm.

You've just somehow internalized whatever it is that you're projecting, at least for me. That's how it is for me that I just, I'm so focused on what I'm projecting to them. 

Zibby: Yeah. And so when did you end up writing this whole book in the midst of everything else? So really I would say that the, it all 

Ilana: started, the idea for the book first came when I was reading with one of my children.

It wasn't my youngest child, but I was. Reading I the book that I think is the first book that all parents read with their children, which is, you know, those, you know, those black and white books where it's just a black image against a white background and a white image against a black background and there are no words on the page.

Mm-hmm. But it's always familiar objects from the baby's world. Um, so I was reading one of these black and white books to a newborn. The reason they're black and white is because of course newborns can only see mm-hmm. Black and white. So I was reading this to one of my children. When my, well, I guess it must have been one of my, I think it was my daughter when she was too young yet to be able to, like, she didn't even know the difference between night and day.

She was still, you know, like newborns do, sleeping through the days and up on all hours of the night, and I wonder to myself, wow, when is she gonna learn to distinguish day from night and black from white? Which is, I realized in that moment, of course, that's God's first act in creating the world that is separating light from darkness.

And then I realized that each time I read this black and white book with my daughter, it was as if I were drawing back the darkness so that the light might appear distinct and, and her world might sharpen into focus. I realized that I was essentially creating the world for her by reading to her, which in turn made me think about how the ancient rabbis talk about in the Midrash, the early centuries of the common era in the land of Israel, they write about how 2000 years before the world was created, the Torah existed.

That is to say. The five books of Moses preceded creation and they say that the, the Torah was God's blueprint for creating the world. God looked into the Torah and based on what was written in the Torah, God learned how to God knew how to create the world. Just like they say, an architect can't build a palace without some sort of blueprint.

And I realized that when I was reading to my daughter, I was essentially teaching her how to. How to make sense of her world. How to discern the black images from the space that's not black, from the white background. And then later on how to tell good from evil and and kindness from cruelty and right from wrong, which is.

Of course where the Bible goes on to with, with Adam and Eve and, and the tree of, of knowledge of knowing good from evil. And as I had that reflection, I said, wow, that's so interesting how really this, such a simple board book that I'm reading this, I don't even know if we would even call it a book, you know this, this black and white book that sort of unfolds accordion style and you put it around the, the, the edges of the stroller.

This this first book I, we read to children. It really is, it really is like the very beginning of, of Genesis and the creation of the world. And I wrote about that, and then I began to really to realize how many of the books that I was reading with my children were unfolding in dialogue with the biblical text.

And as I would have these insights, it wasn't that I ever set out to write a book about, it's just as I would have these insights, I would write about those reflections. I'd write about how, you know, oh, so many of those early books you read with kids or you know, like first words, books that just name objects in the baby's world, which made me think of.

God speaking the world into being in Genesis and I, I kept having these reflections on, you know, I, I remember a moment when my. Two of my children were both begging me to read to them at once. My daughter wanted me to read her from some, like an illustrated children's bible about the book of Genesis, and my son was trying to get me to read him his favorite book, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, which he and I know by heart and probably you two Sydnee.

And they were, they were both like insisting that I read to them first. And, and of course I, one always inevitably gives into the younger child who's gonna have the loud, the louder tantrum. So I gave in to my, my son. And I started reading Tim and I realized like, oh my gosh, this book is not so far afield from.

From the creation of the world. In Genesis, by the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf, like in the very beginning, everything is just darkness and potentiality. And then one by one, right? The sun, the the, the caterpillar emerges. And then every day the caterpillar eats more. But you have this refrain, but he is still hungry and the flaps get ever wider as the caterpillar eats more and more.

And it reminded me of the. Explosion of bounty, as in each subsequent day of creation, God creates more and more and more until there's this period of dormancy and the cocoon, which was like the Sabbath, right? And then out comes something beautiful like the world has been created. And I, so I sort of read the very hungry Caterpillar against the backdrop of the creation story.

And again, that became another short essay. And so the book really emerged. It was never, oh, I'm gonna write a book about, mm-hmm. About reading with children and about my children and about Torah and how those all speak to each other. Um, but it really sort of be, it unfolded as this three strand braid consisting of, you know, readings of children's books and insights into the biblical narrative and reflections on reading with my children.

And each part of the book incorporates at least two of those strands. Um, and sort of, I tried to weave that brain that. That was how the book emerged, and it was really just. Writing down reflections as I had them, and then at some point figuring out how to put it all together. The way I've structured the book, I structure the book according to the five books of Moses.

With each part, it's a series of very, very short chapters, but those chapters are divided into these five larger sections. So I write about themes in the biblical narrative that are reflected in both specific children's books and in the more broadly construed the experience of reading with children. So that, for example, like.

Charlotte's Web becomes a story of, um, actually there are a lot of children's books. I, I think a theme in a lot of children's books is how literacy sets you free. And literacy enables you to you, to you to survive. Um, and the miracles wrought by reading and writing. So very true. The miracles, yes.

Charlotte writing in her web and the, the rats and Mrs. Frisbee and the rats of Nim getting freed when they learn how to read. And Matilda being able to free. Miss Honey from the evil Mrs. Trench bowl, right when she's able to write with her eyes, you know, on the blackboard. And it really made me think of all the signs and wonders in the Exodus story, um, and how the whole journey throughout the Book of Exodus is for the sake of.

Being able, the liberation, why does that liberation, why does God free the Israelites so that God says explicitly so they can worship God on this mountain where they're gonna receive the Torah? Um, so really the whole purpose of the Exodus story is to be able to receive this, this, this book, this narrative, the Torah.

So I write about the literacy as a gift and what it means to give that gift to our children. Anyway, that's sort of how I framed the Exodus. Section, but that's how the book really, that's how the book emerged, is a series of shorter pieces that came together into larger reflections on each of the five books of Moses.

Zibby: Amazing. Well, Ilana, thank you so much Children of the book, A memoir of Reading Together. What a perfect gift, such a great thing for parents and children to have as even a reading list. And thank you so much for coming on. 

Ilana: Thank you so much for this opportunity. 

Zibby: That was my pleasure. All right. Take care.

Happy reading. 

Ilana: Thank you very much. Thank you. 

Zibby: Okay, go back to your kids. Bye bye.