Wanting To Fit In, Learning To Stand Out

In this heartfelt episode, Jed sits down with author and teacher Margaret Gurevich to talk about her middle grade novel, Yasha's Amazing Bar Mitzvah. Set in 1986, with the New York Mets' World Series win as a lively backdrop, the story follows Yasha, a Russian Jewish immigrant who moves from Brighton Beach to the New Jersey suburbs. Suddenly, he's one of only two Russian kids in his grade, navigating Cold War stereotypes, rocky mania, wealth gaps, and classmates who think his Bar Mitzvah—and even his family—aren't "American enough."

Margaret shares the real family history woven into the book: parents who left the former Soviet Union in 1979, a grandfather sent to the Gulag for owning prayer shawls, university quotas that nearly blocked her mother's education, and letters home that arrived with whole sections blacked out. She and Jed talk about what it means when a country's politics are used to judge its people, and how Yasha's friendship with an elderly man named Bernie helps him find the courage to be himself. Margaret also reflects on her own journey—from hiding her Russian-Jewish identity as a teen to proudly writing it into her stories—and why she loves writing for middle graders who are still forming their views of the world.

In the final part of the episode, Jed chats with cartoonist and author Jeffrey Brown about his graphic novel Once Upon a Space Time, where kids join an intergalactic mission with mostly robot supervision. They explore how today's kids' comics blend humor, heart, and big ideas to keep young readers hooked on stories.