Three Questions with Nora Raleigh Baskin

In each installment of "Three Questions With," we get to know a different PJ Our Way author by asking three questions about their work, their process, and interests. Today we're talking to Nora Raleigh Baskin, author of The Truth About My Bat Mitzvah.

What is your writing process? How do you get started?

Most of my books are about something in my life that I feel strongly about. In this case, I wanted to write an apology to my grandmother, my Nana. Like Caroline, I didn’t know how to express my love to her when I was young, and she died before I could really tell her. So, I began the story with her funeral. Since my mother was not alive, my Nana was my only connection to my Jewish heritage. She even took me to Israel when I was eleven years old, but again, I was too young and too angry and damaged at the time, to appreciate her or what she was sacrificing for me. But I never forgot that amazing trip. And in many ways, those fourteen days in 1972 changed my life. The sad part is that it wasn’t until my Nana died that I realized it. I’ve always wanted to tell her how much I really loved her and this book is my way of doing that.

How do you pick names for your characters? Are they inspired by people you know or knew?

To be honest, this book is very autobiographical; my mother was Jewish and my father not. So, I am Caroline, except for the fact that, unlike Caroline, my mother died when I was three. I wanted to write a book about how I found my way to my Jewish birthright, but I had already written about the loss of my mother in my first novel, What Every Girl (except me) Knows, so I made Caroline’s mom non-practicing and uninterested in her Judaism. Everything else is pretty much true. After my grandmother died, I started wearing her Star of David necklace. I even broke the chain the exact same way. And I really did skip school on Rosh Hashanah, pretending to be sick. What isn’t in the book, is that I grew up to become (not only a writer) but a Hebrew school teacher. So, this book is really a work from my heart.

P.S. I change the names of the characters in order to make the story fictional…even if it really isn’t!

Did you struggle with your bat-mitzvah like Caroline does?

I didn’t struggle, because like Caroline I never had a bat mitzvah. But as an adult I struggled with the feeling that I wasn’t Jewish enough, since I hadn’t grown up with a Jewish identity or any Jewish education. When I learned, as an adult, that having a ceremony didn’t make a person any more Jewish than anyone else, I wanted to write a book about that. My sons were both had traditional synagogue ceremonies when they became Bar Mitzvah, but they too, will need to choose what kind of Jewish life they want to live for themselves. Being Jewish isn’t about a ceremony or even about reading Hebrew. It is so much more than that. It’s about history, and tradition, learning, and how we treat other people on this earth and maybe that’s something we all struggle with, all our lives. It’s what makes us human AND Jewish.

More About the Author

Nora Raleigh Baskin is the author of thirteen novels for young readers and a contributor to two story collections. She has won several awards including the 2010 ALA Schneider Family Book Award for Anything but Typical and a 2016 ILA Notable Books for a Global Society for Ruby on the Outside. Nora has taught creative writing to both children and adults for over fifteen years with such organizations as SCBWI, Gotham Writers Workshop, The Unicorn Writers Conference, the Highlights Foundation, and most recently in Westport at The Fairfield Co. Writer’s Studio. Her latest, Nine/Ten: A 9/11 Story, now out in paperback, was reviewed in the New York Times and has received starred reviews, from both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.