New Releases by Miriam Cohen

Jacob is excited about his first day of school! But at school he's nervous and misses his daddy. Will Jacob discover how much fun school can be? Starting a new school can be a difficult adjustment for young children. Jacob's First Day will help ease this transition for little ones with the uplifting message that friendship, kindness, and a willingness to try new things can make school fun. Yael's simple, soft-colored illustrations warmly welcome young readers.

When first grade plans a costume party, Anna Maria dresses as a princess, Willy is a clown, and Jim is "the Strongest Man in the World." But when the third-grade bully arrives and tries to ruin the fun, Jim saves the day when he accidentally takes on the bully, proving that he really is a strong man!

Jacob no longer rides on his father’s back. He is now a big brother. He is helping his daddy today, pushing his little sister in a stroller to the park. His little sister is as cute as a button, but my, she is a wild thing! She runs everywhere in the park. Jacob can’t take his eyes off her for a minute, running fast to catch her.

Layla is a shy new girl in first grade and her classmates wonder why she wears a head scarf. As the school day progresses, the first graders learn about Layla's culture and help make her feel more at ease in her new school. Part of the We Love First Grade!™ series.

When the lady from the principal's office brings a test for the first grade class, the children have trouble with the test and feel bad. Fortunately, their teacher explains that a test doesn't reflect important things like creativity, kindness, and friendship.

Every morning when Mommy goes to work, I kiss her goodbye. Daddy stays home with me, and we do everything together–we do the laundry, we dance, we read, we race to the park. Everything is fun with Daddy. At bedtime Daddy reads to me, and sometimes he falls asleep.

Jacob no longer rides on his father's back. He is now a big brother. He is helping his daddy today, pushing his little sister in a stroller to the park. His little sister is as cute as a button, but my, she is a wild thing! She runs everywhere in the park. Jacob can't take his eyes off her for a minute, running fast to catch her. It's hard! But Jacob knows it's a big brother's job to take good care of a little sister.

It's Valentine's Day and the first graders are excited about the cards they will receive. Their teacher requests everybody in class to send a Valentine's card to everybody else so that nobody feels left out. However, in their eagerness to create the best cards the first graders remember to make cards only for their best friends! This upsets George who does not get as many Valentines as everybody else. Luckily, his friends know just how to cheer him up and as they play music and dance around him, it is one happy Valentine's Day party for everybody after all!

Provides an original approach to the emerging practice of reparations for international crimes and a fresh analysis of the recent jurisprudence at the International Criminal Court.

On his first day of school, four-year-old Jacob is worried and uncomfortable, but when his father picks him up, he has four new friends and plans for the next day.

In the tradition of Kristen Roupenian, Rebecca Schiff, and Ottessa Moshfegh, a darkly humorous debut collection that follows four girls from childhood to adulthood.

Julia Lathrop was a social servant, government activist, and social scientist who expanded notions of women's proper roles in public life during the early 1900s. Appointed as chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau, created in 1912 to promote child welfare, she was the first woman to head a United States federal agency. Throughout her life, Lathrop challenged the social norms of the time and became instrumental in shaping Progressive reform. She began her career at Hull House in Chicago, the nation's most famous social settlement, where she worked to improve public and private welfare for poor people, helped establish America's first juvenile court, and pushed for immigrant rights. Lathrop was also co-founder of one of America's first schools of social work. Later in life she became a leader in the League of Women Voters and an advisor on child welfare to the League of Nations. Following Lathrop's life from her childhood and college education through her social service and government work, this book gives an overview of her enduring contribution to progressive politics, women's employment, and women's education. It also offers a look at how one influential woman worked within the bounds of traditional conventions about gender, race, and class, and also pushed against them.

The children in the first grade must take a test and they are worried. When the results come back, some children feel bad. Their gentle, understading teacher assures the children that a test doesn't tell any of the important things about them--if they are creative, kind, or are a good friend.

Written by best-selling author Miriam Cohen, A Daughter of Two Mothers is the incredible, true account of a handicapped widow's forced separation from her infant daughter, the years of longing and searching, the legal battle, and the subsequent destruction brought by the Nazis. Open this book and you will step into the world of a generation gone, of pre- and post-war Hungarian Jewry, as young Leichu moves between two communities and their divergent lifestyles. This is a gripping story of separation and reunion, of pure faith and acceptance of G-d's will, and of triumph over despair.

An account of the Holocaust experiences of Chanah Kaufman (née Zucker), born in 1929 to an Orthodox Jewish family, related from the viewpoint of the young girl that she was at the time. In Brussels, her parents paid a non-Jew to hide Chanah in her basement. Subsequently she was taken to the Misericorde convent in Leuven, where she and other Jewish girls were hidden throughout the war. The nuns pressured her to convert, convincing her that otherwise the Nazis might kill her along with those who gave her shelter. However, inwardly she always remained Jewish. When the war ended, the nuns did not inform their wards, hoping that the Jewish children they saved would remain Catholics. Chanah was eventually taken to a Jewish orphanage, the Tiefenbrunner Home. Her parents and brother did not survive. She immigrated to Israel after the war. An appendix on pp. 322-344 discusses the role of the general and Jewish undergrounds in Belgium in hiding Jewish children and returning them to their people after the war.

The narrator of this story idolizes his older brother. But when big brother leaves for the army, the narrator tries his best to fill big brother's shoes for his younger brother.

Describes the experiences of two sisters growing up in Brooklyn in the time of Shirley Temple movies and trolleys.

While riding on the subway, a little boy encounters the Island Lady. From her bag she shares an ocean breeze, a Caribbean meal, a steel band, and a party he'll never forget.

Backpack Baby is feeling grumpy and begins to cry. But when the little baby begins to cry too, he knows how to make it stop.

Backpack Baby has a special secret.

Of all the things that are his, a baby likes his father the best.

Even though he doesn't like his part in the first grade play, Jimmy saves the performance when one of the key players gets stage fright.

When Jim's dog is killed, the other first graders experience with him his natural reactions to death.

Impatient to begin reading, a first-grader doesn't realize that there is more to reading than books.

Second-grader Jim isn't sure what he wants to be for Halloween but he knows he wants to be scary.

Jim's anxieties on his first day of school are happily forgotten when he makes a new friend.

Cohen examines shifting patterns in the family roles, work lives, and schooling of two generations of Italian-American women, paying particular attention to the importance of these women's pragmatic daily choices.

George is not a good speller. And he can't always think of the perfect project to work on. But no one else takes care of the class hamster more carefully, or can be trusted to feed the fish exactly the right amount. Then one morning George doesn't come to school. The principal tells all the first graders to watch the news that afternoon. There's going to be a big surprise. What could it be? And where is George?