Lit Squad: This children’s novel puts a magical twist on a bat mitzvah story

A 13-year-old girl is preparing for her bat mitzvah, even though her family rarely goes to synagogue. At the same time, Zippy believes she’s a witch.

That is the premise of the latest children’s novel from Laurel Snyder, called "The Witch of Woodland."

As part of our occasional series called Lit Squad, we talk with authors of middle grade and young adult novels about their books.

Snyder spoke more with The Show about the inspiration for her book.

The interview was conducted before the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel that led to the current war in Gaza.

Full conversation

LAUREL SNYDER: This book came out of the fact that I was parenting through the bar mitzvah process. Both my boys, I have boys who are 16 and 17 now, and they both in sort of quick succession went through this experience. And I was very aware of how different it was for them, and how I wanted, I wanted it to be different for them than it was for me.

MARK BRODIE: And in terms of sort of the, the supernatural aspect of it, I mean, the book is called “The Witch of Woodland.” Like, where did that come from? 

SNYDER: I was a big believer in magic as a child. I'm, I'm somebody who, and to some degree, I still am a big believer in magic, but I was a kid who struggled a lot in these years myself and,, and kind of looked for amazing things in the world around me.

And then I had a very specific experience when I was in 5th or 6th grade, where another older girl apprenticed me to become a witch. So, I, I think as, as is often the case with novels, so many things get pulled into it, that this book is a mixture of my thinking about religious ideas and my own culture and the moment we're in, but also reaching back in, in my childhood memories for things that felt really powerful or confusing or in some cases upsetting when I was a kid, too.

BRODIE: Yeah, well, so you talk about being in the moment and doing the math here. If my math is correct, you at least one of your sons would have been going through the bar mitzvah process during COVID, right?

SNYDER: That's correct, yeah. So we had, right, we had one go through right before. And then one gets stuck. So he would have had his bar mitzvah in June of 2020. And, it was pretty intense.

My, I remember calling my father when everything was starting to shut down to talk about how, like, you know, how we'd have to rethink the bar mitzvah. “And he said to me, Laurel, you're not gonna have a bar mitzvah. It will be two to four years for a vaccine.”

BRODIE: Wow.

LAUREL SNYDER: In March, he said this.

SNYDER: Yeah, it was intense.

BRODIE: Well, I guess he was partially right, right? I mean, it was not two to four years for the vaccine, but I'm guessing you did not have the bar mitzvah, at least the one that you had been planning to have.

SNYDER: Correct, yeah, so we, we initially the, the synagogue really, they did a wonderful, wonderful job, but everybody was so challenged by that moment. And so we had been planning one kind of bar mitzvah and what ended up happening was that we rented an Airbnb in the neighborhood with a swimming pool so that my kid could sort of have a nice evening. And ordered some takeout and, gave him a talus and read the, you know, did, did the usual prayers for Friday night as a family, and that was his bar mitzvah.

And then this sort of, I think probably a lot of people had similar experiences. And then everybody kept sort of expecting things were going to come back to normal and kicking the can down the road.

And so what we ended up doing at the very last minute was moving everything to my backyard, my front yard and backyard. We sort of rented a tent and a bunch of chairs at the last minute when Delta hit. And moved the party to our yard. So it was a very impromptu DIY kind of.

BRODIE: Did any of that find its way into the book?

SNYDER: Yes, certainly, certainly the pandemic affected the book. But I'm not sure that it affected it so much in direct content as that I thought I knew what the book was going to be in the same way that we all thought we knew what lots of things were, and then the pandemic changed those understandings.

And so I thought I knew what the book was going to be. I had it all planned out. I had the bar mitzvah all planned out, life was all planned out. And then everything went up in the air, and the book ended up coming out like two years late. And a big part of that was that my well-laid plan didn't work anymore, and the way I was thinking about it was different.

The way my kids were responding was different, and some of that uncertainty and, and the sort of lessons of the pandemic, I think, came into the book as ideas in, in ways that are more sort of overt than I might have otherwise had them. But uncertainty is an idea in the book, and being comfortable with that feeling, being, learning to be comfortable with things not being perfect or fixed or worked out.

BRODIE: Well, I would think the idea of unpredictability and maybe being a little uncomfortable with things is something that a lot of your readers could probably relate to based on where they are in their lives.

SNYDER: Exactly, that's exactly right. That, that, and I think it's one of the dangers of writing, and probably this is true in radio also, right? If you think you know the point you have to make before you've done the work of getting there. You're probably not right.

And so sort of when you, when you think you have something well laid for a book, I think often you haven't done enough discovery yet. Like you, you haven't figured out what the accidents are gonna be. And I think that that then sort of was replicated in the book.

And I think that that is something that, that kids this age, particularly middle school kids, go through that we as parents want so badly to make their lives sort of fine, or good or comfortable, and being 12 or 13 is just an age of discomfort for so many kids, and learning to accept that reality and to, to sort of say, “I, I can't fix this. I can't control this. I can't, there's nothing's gonna make this quite right.”

And also, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and have tomorrow. And things will be better down the road in a, in a way that I can't even anticipate, but, but that doesn't mean that I can fix this right now.

BRODIE: Right. Well, I wonder if maybe the, the magic aspect comes in a little bit there as well, because, you know, a lot of times when people feel out of control or, you know, that that something is just really too hard for them, the idea of, you know, I know this is not exactly what your character is doing, but you know, the ability to wave a magic wand and make everything better can be really appealing. So I wonder if, if there's an aspect of that that sort of fits into all what you're talking about.

SNYDER: The, the I feel like that was sort of the, the underlying thing for me in this book is that Zippy. This is a book about a girl who is simultaneously Jewish and preparing for bat mitzvah and also believes herself to be a witch, and works really, really hard to kind of control the world around her. And she does this in a number of ways, but the main way she does this is magic.

The reason that spells and magic feel so satisfying to her is that, is that she is trying to manage her life. She is trying to manage the things she has no control over. And I think, I think a lot of us do that in this world.

We do that with diet, we do that with exercise, we do that with schoolwork, we do that, I mean all kinds of ways. And I think what Zippy has to learn both, both in terms of her daily life and in terms of magic is that sometimes you have to relinquish that power, that control, sometimes it isn't about control, but that doesn't mean it's not also useful and worthwhile.

BRODIE: Do you see this book in some ways as maybe a, a helpful guide for teenagers who are maybe struggling with some of these issues in terms of understanding who they are or what they believe or sort of where they fit into the world or even where they fit into their family or their community?

SNYDER: I really, really hope so. Those of us who write for this age, it's a, it's a funny thing because we're speaking a language we don't, we don't actually speak fluently anymore. You know, you're, you're reaching back from memory and you're looking at the kids, the kids today, and you're trying to find a way to, to make something that will be meaningful and useful.

You know, the specifics are different, right? Zippy's story is not anybody else's story, but I really hope that the kids who read this book, sort of, because they're not Zippy, they can sort of see her as a mirror.

But yeah, I mean, I think all humans wrestle with these questions, and I think that there are certain moments in childhood where it's more acute or newer or, or, you know, your emotions are kind of out of control and you're processing it in a louder way, but I, I'm not sure that adults, I mean, I, I hear from adults about children's books, too. I think that a lot of, a lot of adults find, find these things also useful.