YaYa & YoYo

I had lunch today—in the mid­dle of a Min­neso­ta snowstorm—with Dori Wein­stein, one of my Writ­ing Friends. It was an excel­lent way to spend part of a very snowy after­noon. We man­aged to tack­le the sub­jects of mar­ket­ing, dis­ci­pline in a writer’s life, event plan­ning, pic­ture books, nov­el writ­ing, and series writing…as well as eat our veg­gies and catch up on the kids and life etc.

Dori brought me a copy of her newest book, Hoopla Under the Hup­pah, which is the third book  in the YaYa and YoYo series. My daugh­ter and I read the first one in our moth­er-daugh­ter book­club sev­er­al years ago just when it came out and we’ve had the plea­sure of read­ing the sec­ond and third dur­ing devel­op­ment. We bring the non-Jew­ish view­point to the author. In oth­er words, we ask all the ques­tions. 

YaYa (Ellie) and YoYo (Joel) Sil­ver are twins. (Just like my Rose and Thomas in Giant Pump­kin Suite!) They are hilar­i­ous and real and won­der­ful char­ac­ters, as is their sur­round­ing cast of fam­i­ly and friends. The series is mak­ing its way through a year of Jew­ish cel­e­bra­tions and observations—Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, and a fam­i­ly wed­ding are cov­ered in the first three books.

I have learned so much from these books. I’ve also sim­ply loved the sto­ries. I had the hon­or of “blurb­ing” this last one.

This is what I said:

Beau­ti­ful, cre­ative, and authen­tic explanations—so acces­si­ble, even for those of us who are not Jew­ish. The joy and beau­ty of this wed­ding, and all of the rit­u­als and tra­di­tions around it, are tremen­dous fun.

Have a read—I’m seri­ous about the tremen­dous fun! 

And in case you are wondering…Dori and I are 14 inch­es apart in height! The pic­ture we had the serv­er take makes me laugh!