Why I Love Pickled Watermelon (the food and the book)!

It was a hot Israeli summer many decades ago, I was seven years-old and it was spectacular! It wasn’t just my first trip to Israel -- where I now live with my family – it was also my first trip outside of the US, and my very first flight! (Two flights, actually! One from LAX to JFK and one from JFK to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.) Every part of the trip was a sensory overload moment: coming from LA where we had no relatives to meeting my giant Israeli family, hearing my father who spoke English with a pronounced accent speaking spitfire Hebrew with native fluency, the noise, the crowds, the ancient stones, the just-as-ancient and dusty tiny food markets that sold hard-as-rocks individually wrapped Bazooka gum with Hebrew comics… it was all wonderfully overwhelming and way outside my 7-year-old comfort zone.

11-year-old Molly, the protagonist of Pickled Watermelon had a similar experience when her family spent the summer of 1986 in Israel. Molly’s story is one I identify with so entirely I wondered if author Esty Schachter and I had some shared family history. Based on fantastic reader reviews of Pickled Watermelon, Esty brings a young person’s first major international experience to life in such a way that even those not living in Molly’s parallel universe feel connected to her one-of-a-kind summer abroad. The beauty of this story is that it transports middle-grade readers right into the uniqueness of Israeli vibe and culture. We were delighted to offer this book for the first time in 2018, and we’re thrilled to offer it again in honor of Israel’s upcoming 75^th anniversary of independence!

Catriella Freedman is chair of PJ Our Way’s book selection committee and director of author stewardship at PJ Library. She can’t believe she tried pickled watermelon all those years ago but since then she’s added watermelon topped with salty cheese to her tasting repertoire.