Sulamith Ish-Kishor

Sulamith Ish-kishor (1896 – June 23, 1977) was an American writer. She was born in London , England, one of eight children of Ephraim and Fanny Ish-Kishor. Her father was a well-known writer of Jewish children's literature and an early proponent of Hovevei Zion , a pre-zionist movement, and later of political Zionism . Her older sister was a pioneering writer of Jewish children's literature in English. Sulamith began writing at age 5 and had several of her poems printed in British publications by the time she was 10. When Sulamith was 13, her family moved to New York City (like the family in her novel Our Eddie ). At Hunter College , she studied languages and history. She wrote widely, and was published in several magazines, including The New Yorker , Saturday Review , and Reader's Digest . Her now-classic story of a long-distance correspondence and its fateful conclusion, "The Rose," was published in a 1943 edition of Collier's and was subsequently plagiarized by preacher-author Max Lucado in a 1992 collection. Our Eddie was a 1970 Newbery Honor book. It portrays a father whose abusive treatment of his child contrasts with the Jewish values he claims to promote. A Boy of Old Prague , which recounts the friendship between a 16th-century Gentile boy and a Jewish family was a popular selection of the Scholastic Book Club in the 1970s and dealt with the issue of anti-semitism in late Renaissance Europe.¹