Ilana Kurshan, CHILDREN OF THE BOOK: A Memoir of Reading Together
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.4 • 602 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zibby interviews award-winning author Ilana Kurshan about her luminous, heartfelt new book, CHILDREN OF THE BOOK: A Memoir of Reading Together. Ilana shares how reading aloud to her five children—from GOODNIGHT MOON to CHARLOTTE’S WEB—became deeply intertwined with her lifelong practice of reading from the Torah. She reflects on how books create a common family language, forge intimacy, and shift in meaning as we revisit them through different stages of life. She also opens up about raising her children in Jerusalem, the role of literature in calming fears, and how parenthood itself can feel like a sacred journey mirrored in biblical stories.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, listeners. We have totally booked live coming up this fall, and I hope you'll be a part of it. |
| 0:06.0 | We have three events in New York City, September 19th, 25th, and 30th, in New York, where I'll be doing six interviews live each day. |
| 0:14.1 | We also have a petite retreat in Greenwich on October 4th. |
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| 0:30.6 | There are some things you'll never understand. Like, why did that person ghost me? When did man-spreading become socially acceptable? And how |
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| 1:03.8 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibi. Formerly, moms don't have |
| 1:10.6 | time to read books. In my daily show, |
| 1:12.6 | I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, |
| 1:18.9 | whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously |
| 1:24.9 | podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend |
| 1:29.6 | my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, |
| 1:35.4 | and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com |
| 1:41.7 | and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. |
| 1:47.6 | Alana Kershan is the author of Children of the Book, a memoir of reading together. |
| 1:52.6 | Alana is also the author of If All the Seas Were Inc, winner of the Sammy Roar Prize for Jewish Literature, |
| 1:58.6 | and of course the Memoir Children of the Book. |
| 2:00.5 | She is the book's editor of Lilith Magazine and works as aature and, of course, the memoir, Children of the Book. She is the |
| 2:00.9 | book's editor of Lilith Magazine and works as a teacher and translator in Jerusalem, where she |
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