Joni Sussman has an encyclopedic memory of the books she worked on for 20 years as the head of Kar-Ben Publishing, the oldest publisher of exclusively Jewish children’s books in the world.
“These books are my babies,” Sussman said. “You work on them for two years – they come as just a typed up sheet of paper, and they come out as a finished hardcover jacketed book with beautiful illustrations.”
Each year, Kar-Ben gets around 1,000 manuscripts, of which Sussman would choose 20 or so to be turned into books. That makes it around 400-500 books that Sussman has helped make it to shelves.
Over her tenure, Kar-Ben has published everything from the classic “Sammy Spider” series to books like “Rifka takes a bow,” about the Yiddish theatre of the early 1900s, by a 96-year-old author whose family were Yiddish performers.
But now, Sussman is making way for a new generation of Kar-Ben books. She retired on June 28 and celebrated her 70th birthday shortly after. It’s a strange but exciting transition for someone who has spent practically her entire life working, she told TC Jewfolk.
“My dad had a printing company when I was 10 years old – he used to bring home stuff from his printing company, we’d collate envelopes,” Sussman said. “So I’m looking forward to [retirement]. I’m a little apprehensive, I don’t know what that’s gonna look like, but the time is right. And it’s time for a new voice [at Kar Ben], too.”
On July 1, Fran Greenman-Schmitz, a marketing executive, took over as publisher of Kar-Ben.
For Sussman, ending up at Kar-Ben was part of her overall career arc; she never aimed to work on Jewish children’s books.
In the mid-1970s, after graduating from the University of Minnesota with a journalism degree, she worked as the assistant press secretary to Minneapolis Mayor Al Hofstede – who promptly lost his reelection bid in 1975, leaving Sussman out of work.
She quickly found her way into publishing, working at a local publisher for firefighter and law enforcement magazines; her father’s printing business; a global newspaper personal ad business; Minnesota Parent Magazine; and Meadowbrook Press, a children’s book publisher.
“So I was kind of in publishing, sort of, all along…and then bumped into Harry Lerner at this book fair,” said Sussman.
It was 2001, and Lerner, the founder of Minneapolis-based Lerner Publishing Group, had just acquired Kar-Ben. He was looking for someone to run the imprint and told Sussman she would be a great fit. “That was that,” Sussman said, and she joined Kar-Ben.
Reflecting on her tenure, Sussman sees her role as a dream job.
“It has been really a remarkable journey, knowing that I pick the books that parents and educators and Jewish nursery schools are buying for children,” she said. “It was a chance to make a mark” on generations of Jewish kids.
It was also an opportunity for Sussman to lean into her background: Sussman is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, and made a point to publish books on the topic. It’s a balancing act, she said, to keep the Holocaust age-appropriate for children.
“What I’m looking for in Holocaust-related stories are ones that offer some glimmer of hope in some ways – even though it was not a hopeful time, and certainly not for the children who survived or didn’t survive the Shoah,” Sussman said. “But a children’s picture book is a different kind of entity.”
For example, “The Whispering Town” tells the story of Jews in Denmark, and how the non-Jewish resistance helped smuggle Jews to Sweden to avoid the Nazi threat. It’s a remarkable event that saved nearly all of Denmark’s Jews from certain death.
Sussman also worked on a biography of Agnes Keleti, a Hungarian Jew and gymnast who survived the Holocaust and, while representing Hungary, went on to be one of the most decorated Jewish Olympians of all time.
“This is a book that isn’t about the Holocaust, and isn’t just for Jews,” Sussman said. “Schools and libraries are going to buy this book all over. This is an inspirational story about someone who overcomes real hardships to achieve something wonderful – and this happens to be a Hungarian Jewish teenager during the Holocaust.”
While at Kar-Ben, Sussman was also at the forefront of evolving Jewish children’s literature to meet the needs of a changing American Jewry.
“When I started 20 years ago, the books that we were doing were different kinds of books,” she said. “They were Shabbat stories, and people lit the candles and they had the challah and all of that. But we assumed that everybody who bought a Shabbat book was Jewish and knew all about Shabbat. Today, that is not the case.”
Families in these older stories were almost exclusively of European backgrounds, and parents and grandparents were all Jewish.
But nowadays, Jewish families are more diverse and intermarried, with family members who may not know much about Judaism or not be Jewish. There are also many Jews who, for a variety of reasons, may not feel confident in their Jewish knowledge, but still want to pass Judaism on to their children.
As a result, Kar-Ben books include an explainer of Jewish holidays featured in a particular story. The books themselves are also less a walkthrough of holiday practices for kids, and more about telling a larger story of Jewish life.
“We want this to be an easy foot in the door for any family, so that nobody feels intimidated by, ‘Oh, this is a Jewish book,’” Sussman said. “You can learn along with your kids if there’s something that isn’t familiar to you.”
Kar-Ben stories and illustrations have become a showcase for intermarried and diverse families, including portraying queer parents, as well as representing more Jews from non-European backgrounds.
As American Jewry and broader society continue changing, Sussman thinks it’s time for Kar-Ben to publish books about transgender children.
“What they say about children’s literature is, you need to have both windows and mirrors,” Sussman said. “You need to have windows to see into other worlds, but also mirrors to reflect your own background. And that’s what we’re trying to do. By offering books that are both mirrors, to some, and windows, to others.”
Turning 70 years old reminded Sussman of another one of many changes she’s overseen at Kar-Ben: Improving the portrayal of grandparents.
“The grandparents, in the old stories, sat in rocking chairs and knit, right? They were 100 years old with white buns and glasses,” Sussman said. “They didn’t ride bicycles, they didn’t work.”
Now, older folk in Kar-Ben books “look like I look, they do what I do,” she said. “They travel, they write, they ride their bikes.”
Of course, those are all activities that Sussman plans to keep up in retirement. She may also write more children’s books, having already published a few of her own stories.
But for now, Sussman is pausing to take in her new frontier and a much quieter email inbox as Kar-Ben moves onward. “I’m looking forward to retiring,” she said. “But I’m also going to miss it.”
Congrats to an amazing career Joni!! Your upbeat positive voice has inspired families near and far !!