Esther Heller, Menucha Publishers - a chat about consistency, censorship, and schedules
Hey! Welcome to another issue of Frum Books, home of everything related to frum publishing. This week we share a fascinating conversation with Esther Heller, editor-in-chief at Menucha Publishers, jam packed with interesting tidbits and behind-the-scenes info.
Let’s start off with a general backdrop. Menucha has been around in a few variations over the years. Could you tell me about that?
Our CEO, Mr. Hirsch Traube started out by distributing books for Targum Press. I used to work there, some of our other staff as well. When Targum went under, he had the rights to most of the books and decided to continue with those. Then he started doing new books and slowly built it up. People really responded really well to him. He's always coming up with new and creative ideas, which is very refreshing because we're probably the youngest company out there. We really try to implement his ideas and it keeps us on our toes, it's exciting.
When did the educational idea come about, how old is this project?
Well, we were trying to get a contract with The Board of Education for a very long time, to be a vendor schools would be able to order books through. It took a tremendous amount of applying, paperwork, jumping through hoops, and everything. We finally got it a few years ago, and then we started focusing on the schools, talking to principals and teachers to find out what they need.
We also evaluate the secular books that the schools need, and give them a censorship level. Different schools have a different tolerance level. A lot of them don’t mind if a book mentions Christmas because it's non-Jews celebrating their own holiday, ‘So what's the big deal?’ And other schools will say “We don't want that in our schools.” Schools used to hire secretaries to go through the books and whiteout things, or decide what books they could use or not, and now they can rely on us to do it for them.
What is Menucha’s relationship with Fountas and Pinnell? (leveling system for books)
Part of the process of getting our books approved is to have them leveled by Fountas and Pinell. We do it for all our middle-grade books.
We level them because we want it to be clear, whether it's to the teachers or to parents, who it’s for. Some feedback that we got from educators when we were first starting out is that there are a lot of wonderful frum books out there for kids; really enjoyable, fun books with exciting and interesting characters that they can identify with, but sometimes the level is really uneven. They might have a character acting very age-appropriately, but the vocabulary, the length of the sentences, and the complexity of the plot are not consistent with the age of their characters.
It’s a part of our editing process, we don't expect authors to send in a properly leveled manuscript. There’s this wonderful middle-grade book I am reviewing right now - the opening sentence is about a paragraph length with a lot of adverbs in it. So I made a note of it, because everything else in the book is really good and really appropriate. I’ll give feedback to the author and ask her to make shorter sentences. I'm not going to reject a book because the level isn't consistent.
In the original rough drafts, do most authors default to writing above level or below?
I would say most above level.
Sometimes what I will do is have the author change the age of the character, maybe just by a grade, instead of asking them to revise their whole writing. Or sometimes if the word count is too low, I’ll tell an author - “Either you can make the book longer, or make the kids younger. You decide.” Although sometimes kids will be excited to read about characters a little older than them and kind of feel what that's going to be like, they generally don't like reading about younger characters.
I have noticed that not all Menucha books are rated by Fountas and Pinnell and just say the recommended grades in the back. Are there specific books that you don't level?
Sometimes we don’t want to miss a Yom Tov season by waiting for Fountas and Pinell, so we'll put down the grades, and then when we get the letter we'll put that on our website. Sometimes it's a kind of book that just doesn't make sense to level. Like we have this joke book “You're Joking.” We're not going to level that, we’ll use our judgment. And if it's something that’s so filled with Hebrew words, it's going to make it artificially leveled higher because they're looking at the foreign language in there.
When a manuscript comes in for an adult book, it's unedited, it's rough. What are you looking for in a manuscript that tells you if this is a book that could be a success?
First of all, if I start reading and I have to stay up to the middle of the night to finish it, wow. And even if I find flaws in it, or there's things that are unrealistic, I know there’s something there. So that’s on a gut level. I look for good characterization, interesting plot, and if it’s an author that already has a name then I know that it's going to sell well. But we also deal with a lot of first-time authors.
We’re putting out a lot of novels now, some written by teenage girls. We have books by 14, 15, 16 year old girls coming up. I have a manuscript now that is actually not even a teen novel but one of these epic family historical novels, the author is 12 years old. She’s in Riva Pomerantz’s program for teens, and I see potential for her, I feel like that's investing in the next generation of writers.
Sometimes we get a manuscript that’s just inappropriate for a frum publishing company. I can usually tell that from the cover letter, or sometimes I have to start reading it until I realize it. We got a wonderful middle-grade submission that I really wanted. It was actually based on an Escape type of plot, but there was a friendship in the orphanage in France, where they were hiding these Jewish children, between a girl and a boy, it was almost like brother and sister, both orphans, helping and understanding and supporting each other, but you can't do that in a book for frum children. And it wasn’t the type of thing that she could have changed. This could have been an award-winning book, it was so good. I very regretfully rejected it and after I explained to her what the problem was and I told her to please send more of her writing.
You mentioned not ranking books so that they can be out in time for Yom Tov. Is there a science behind the Yom Tov schedule?
Yes, we plan what's going to come out in adult fiction, girls' middle grades, and something else for boys. It doesn't always work out, we can be stuck on a title, or not satisfied with the cover or inside design, and it can take much longer than we thought and we’ll miss our chag. Mr. Traube and his wife, Esti Traube, who is our educational coordinator, feel very strongly that they want the book to be the best it can be, even if we missed the deadline and it’s going to have to come out later.
Now with printing delays and shipping delays, you can't really know when it’s going to come out. We print any books that have color inside like children's picture books or cookbooks in China, and actually our printer is in Wuhan, China. Even a couple of months before people knew about COVID, they were telling us “all of our workers are sick”. And then we had books delayed on ships with nothing moving.
It's really disappointing to an author. One of our books was supposed to come out for Chanukah but it didn't because of this issue of the cover not being amazing. I explained to the author that it’s to the advantage of the book but it is disappointing, especially when you're a first time author and you're so excited it’s coming out, you tell people and all that and then it doesn’t happen. But if you look at the big picture, it's better to have a better cover than to come out a couple of months earlier.
The big sensation from this past summer was Sara Yocheved Rigler’s book “I've Been Here Before.” Could you tell me about what led up to publishing that, and what was the feedback you got?
Sara Rigler usually works with Artscroll but she knew this was an edgier book and I guess they didn’t feel that they could handle the topic. She felt the topic was a little risky and controversial. We used to also do that with Rabbi Twerski z”l - his books came out with Artscroll but with something a little edgier he would come to us.
I was worried that Holocaust survivors and maybe even their children might feel affronted; these are people who grew up in safe environments with their whole family, living the middle class life and all. They were having these nightmares and were suffering like they were survivors. I was concerned that it would feel to a survivor or child of a survivor somehow that their stories had been appropriated, and that would cause them distress which is the last thing we would want to do.
Sara understood that concern, she added some explanations in her introduction to show respect, to explain that this is in no way a comparison, it's just different issues being raised. A lot of times, the things that I worry about happening don't happen, and thankfully, we didn’t get any negative feedback, and sales did great, as with anything Sara Rigler writes. She is an amazing communicator and she puts so much into her books. But these were definitely groundbreaking ideas.
You've been in publishing and editing for so many years. Do you see any shift in preferences or in style?
There was a lot less censorship for books that were published 20 years ago or more. It's kind of counter-intuitive, you would think it was the opposite. Even when we reprinted the Baker's Dozen , we had to censor them! They were earning money by polishing their friends’ nails… we were like “We can’t put this in a children's book.” We had to figure out how to take that out or minimize it. The book “Sun Inside Rain” was such an amazing book; when it came out, it was a bestseller. We’ve reprinted it, but those kind of books are not coming out now. Those are the kinds of books that I have to reject now.
Where is the shift coming from? Is it in response to people's demands? Is it just that all publishers started being more strict?
If we’re not careful about the censorship, we get complaints. Customers complain to the booksellers and then the booksellers will complain to the publishers. You get feedback if you’re not strict with these things.
Nowadays it seems like the secular world has just invaded the Jewish home, you would think that the standards would have loosened. That's not what has happened, and it is stricter than it was 20 years ago. And I think it's fine because the content that’s going out in the secular world now, we don't want to get on a slippery slope and go into it. It's not like the 1950’s where any children's book would be okay.
We want to hold on to the standards, on the other hand we do want to do things that are breakthrough, like Sarah Rigler’s book. If it’s just for entertainment, I think we have to be careful. For nonfiction titles or self-help, if it's information that will help people and that they can get it from a frum source, then I don't mind taking those books. They still need to have limits on them, but they can't be so watered down that they don't help anyone.
This is a discussion that's really evolving now, at this point that’s how I see it. The world is changing so fast that you have to evolve your thinking.
Can you give me any sneak peek about projects you're working on, and what’s upcoming?
We have a few comics coming, a new thing for us, and some other books coming out, including a picture book that I wrote. My boss wanted to do “Yarmulkes for Sale'', based on “Caps for Sale.” I was thinking of who could do it, and I thought “Wait a minute, I’m a writer! I love the idea, I’ll write it!” So it was fun, and it has an upsherin theme to it, which makes it cute.
And here’s another little bit for M. Kenan fans -
There are frum book nerds in all corners of the world - if you know one of them, please send this to them!