Podcast Ideas

For my podcast, I will concentrate on Religion and the way it is presented in children’s books. I am Jewish and one of my favorite books as a child was “Sammy Spider’s First Hanukkah.” I was always sad that Sammy Spider was never able to celebrate Hanukkah with the family and that he was not allowed to spin dreidels because according to his mother, “spiders don’t spin dreidels, spiders spin webs.” To me, the spiders always seemed to represent children that were not Jewish but were curious about Judaism and looking in on the religion from an outsider’s point of view. I would like to focus my podcast on how different religions are presented in children’s literature and how that affects the children reading the books. For example, a non-Jewish child could identify with Sammy Spider if he or she wished he could spin dreidels and celebrate Hanukkah, but is not Jewish. I would like to find another book that examines a different religion as well and use that to further examine religion in children’s literature.