Claim to Fame: The Art of Building a Book
| September 7, 2016
Photo: Shutterstock
O
nce Upon a Pesach The Miracles of Chanukah When We Left Yerushalayim Who Is the Builder?… Stories for children? Well yes but they also contain deep messages for teenagers and even adults.
Meet Genendel Krohn talented author mother and teacher. Maybe you’ve met her already through the pages of her books. Let’s hear a little about Mrs. Krohn’s creative process and the path she took to becoming a reader and a writer.
“I started writing children’s books because I was looking for books to read to my kids” Mrs. Krohn explains. “As an artist I was very particular about the illustrations. I ended up writing Who Is the Builder? a book that I would want to read to them.”
Still writing the story and getting it published is a whole different process. Mrs. Krohn went to a few different publishers until she found the one that was the right fit for her book which turned out to be Feldheim. “I’ve been with them ever since” says this author of more than ten books to date. “I’m so grateful because Feldheim allows me to be involved with every aspect of the book such as choosing the illustrator and planning the illustrations which is so important to me.”
Who Is the Builder? for example was illustrated by Tirtza Peleg whose drawings involve many detailed layers of meaning. “It was the first book she illustrated for the English-speaking world” Mrs. Krohn recalls. “I met her to discuss the illustrations and I would call to discuss any new ideas with her.”
Later when Mrs. Krohn began using Tova Katz she called her new illustrator to thank her for her illustrations. “Tova had never heard the name Genendel before and she was surprised that I was a woman!” she says with a laugh.
Mrs. Krohn’s most recent book Honorable Mentschen: A Torah-Based Guide to Derech Eretz and Social Skills needed a completely different style of illustration because it’s done with comics. But in each case Mrs. Krohn works long and hard to ensure that everything comes out the way she envisions it.

How did she come up with the idea of a book about derech eretz rather than something based on the Yamim Tovim as many of her other books are? “I teach third-grade girls and I created a series of derech eretz workshops for my students. There are so many things you expect kids to know that they just don’t know! We’d act out different scenarios and I’d ask the girls what I was doing wrong. They just loved it… and I decided to turn the idea into a book.”
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