“Trouble Finds Evie Lefkowitz”
By Diana Harmon Asher
I was hoping for something lighter. My last three reviews dealt with weighty topics like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Holocaust, and the future of rabbinic Judaism. I arrived at the Israelite office excited to look through my new stack of books. I shuffled through them like mail after a two-week vacation. I stopped. A picture of a large green grasshopper inside a glass jar caught my attention. I found out later it was a praying mantis, not a grasshopper.
PJ Library distributed nearly 2.75 million Jewish books to children in the U.S. and Canada in 2025. They regularly send the Israelite their latest books, including the one with the praying mantis on the cover. At first, I didn’t realize it was a PJ Library book. It wasn’t in the usual picture book format for young children. It was also 250 pages. This book was written for “tween” readers ages 9–12 under their brand “PJ Our Way.”
“Trouble Finds Evie Lefkowitz,” written by Diana Harmon Asher, tells the story of 7th grader Evie. She is dealing with the loss of her father, Cantor Robert Lefkowitz, who passed away two years ago. She remembers following him around the temple pulling on the fringes of his tallit. She feels closest to him in the “little sanctuary” with the wooden honey-colored seats and the stained glass windows. The author dedicated the book to her father, who was also a cantor. In the acknowledgments, she explained that she drew upon many of her childhood memories growing up at Temple Beth-El of Great Neck, Long Island.
Over the past 14 years, I taught more than two hundred 6th and 7th graders preparing for their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. I remember students just like Evie who lost a parent. They would write about it in their speeches and dedicate the ceremony in their memory. In the story, Evie is about to start her Bat Mitzvah lessons. Her dad as the cantor would have been her teacher. The new cantor meets with Evie and offers her recordings of her dad singing her Torah portion. Is Evie ready to hear her father’s voice?
Evie is also dealing with her mom starting to date again. She isn’t dating just anyone, she is dating the new assistant principal at Evie’s middle school. The student gossip is going viral.
The praying mantis is carried into the story by Evie’s friend Spencer who brings it in a glass jar for a school science project. An encounter with bully Tommy Halliday ends with a broken glass jar on the hallway floor. I noticed a tiny illustration in the footer near the page number. It was the praying mantis. Every other page or so it would appear in a slightly different position. It got me curious when the praying mantis would be back.
More awkward situations follow when Evie’s mom asks her to tutor Joey, a boy she has a crush on. Joey happens to be best friends with Tommy the bully. When Evie goes with Joey to the movies, she ends up with Tommy and his friends. This leads to peer pressure to smoke cigarettes and a ride home in a police van.
Hebrew school was also part of Evie’s life. When she enters her Hebrew school, she says she’s not Evie, she’s Chavah. Jewish kids will identify with having to go to Hebrew school in the afternoon after their regular school lets out, just like Evie and her friends.
Security guards are the new normal at Hebrew schools, synagogues, and temples. When Evie described Eddie, the security guard, I knew this wasn’t just a kids story anymore. Evie says, “We file in greeted by Eddie, who stands at the door. Even though he’s the size of a small U-haul, the way he smiles and welcomes everyone, it’s easy to forget he’s a security guard. Eddie started at Shir Shalom after there was a horrible shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. My mom says when she was a kid they never imagined you’d need a guard at temple. But since we need one now, I’m glad it’s Eddie.”
At my synagogue, we have two retired police officers who we all know by their first names. They are on duty along with Amberley Police officers. They welcome us every Shabbat, but I often think how they would be the first in the line of fire. The book talks about bomb threats that happen regularly, where the kids get a day off of Hebrew school. This is all a very real part of life as an American Jew.
The praying mantis is back when we enter Ms. Long’s science class. Ms. Long explains in great detail how the female praying mantis needs protein after mating, and will often eat the male. Then, the kids see it happen. Spencer can’t stop thinking about it. They decide it was cruel to keep the mantises locked up in a tank, and they launch operation “Mantis Freedom.”
The second half of the book centers around their plan to break out the mantises and the consequences that follow. I found the second half of the book very fast-moving with less time spent on middle schooler embarrassment and more time on forming lasting relationships.
Operation “Mantis Freedom” requires two enemy groups to come together. Evie and her friends need to work with Tommy and his friends for the plan to be successful. When the teachers see Tommy, they see trouble coming, and he often lives up to their expectations. But as the kids work on their plan together, they discover there is more to Tommy than they thought. Over time they build trust and break stereotypes.
I have had students who switch from an all Jewish school to a secular school. They tell me how different it feels when they are one of the few Jewish kids at the school. Evie gets frustrated with kids in her middle school who think she eats Matzah on Yom Kippur. Evie’s best friend Rachel is of Japanese heritage. She gets frustrated with Tommy when he calls the traditional Japanese garment a sayonara instead of a kimono. Sayonara means goodbye in Japanese.
The author illustrates how people from different cultures can relate to each other. When Evie talks about being known as Chava at Hebrew school, Rachel says, “I’m Ryoko to my grandparents. I mean my name is Rachel, but they call me Ryoko.”
The story includes an incident of antisemitic vandalism when someone drives through the temple parking lot and throws a brick. The brick shatters one of the stained glass windows in the little sanctuary where Evie feels closest to her dad. The community comes together to help Evie and the temple’s congregation heal.
I was surprised how emotional I felt after reading this book. I found the book engaging, even as an adult. I think it can help children deal with challenging issues like mourning a loved one, and coming to terms with parents dating again.
So was this the lighter book I was looking for? I want to thank the author for including characters like Sandwich, Evie’s dog. There was a scene where the babysitter was trying to brush Sandwich’s teeth that got me laughing. It made it easier to handle the reality she was describing that our Jewish kids and parents have to live with every day.
