Sydney Taylor Award Blog Tour: Sidura Ludwig and Sophia Vincent Guy

It’s the second day of the 2025 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour (click here for the full schedule) and I’m honored to talk with Sidura Ludwig and Sophia Vincent Guy, author and illustrator of Rising, a Sydney Taylor Picture Book Honor winner.

Travis: Hello Sidura and Sophia! Congratulations on your Sydney Taylor picture book honor for Rising! How did you find out about winning a Sydney Taylor Honor? What was your reaction?

Author Sidura Ludwig: It was Friday afternoon and I was getting ready for Shabbat. I had literally just taken my challahs out of the oven, AND I was preparing a challah kugel from last week’s leftover challah, when I got the call about the Sydney Taylor Honor. I was absolutely over-the-moon (still am!) and overwhelmed. As soon as Aviva Rosenberg said she was calling from the Sydney Taylor committee, I may have screamed. It is such a huge honor to be recognized, especially alongside so many wonderful Jewish picture books this year.

Illustrator Sophia Vincent Guy: Aviva Rosenberg sent me an email a few days before the ceremony.  I live in Israel so it was a little tricky with the time difference for her to connect with me over the phone. I was really excited and honored that Rising had been selected.  It is a wonderful feeling to have something recognized that you put a lot of love into, and both Sidura and I put a lot of heart into Rising.  That recognition also means that Rising resonated with a lot of people, and that is really the greatest gift – to know that what you helped create touched others. 

Travis: Sidura – What was the initial inspiration for Rising?

Sidura Ludwig: I wrote RISING right at the heart of the pandemic when everything was shut down, we were all stuck at home, and our routines seemed upside down. The one routine that didn’t change for me, though, was making challah and getting ready for Shabbat. Each Friday morning, I still woke up early to make my dough. Soon, my house would be filled with the familiar scent of freshly baked bread. I still made our favourite foods for Shabbat dinner. We lit candles at candle-lighting time and sat down as a family around the Shabbat table. For that 25-hr period, we leaned into the life we knew during a time of great upheaval. Challah baking for me became an important anchor in my life when I otherwise felt completely afloat.

At the time, I was working on my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I was doing the Picture Book Intensive semester. My advisor, Jane Kurtz, asked us to write a non-fiction picture book manuscript. I started to play with a poem about what challah meant to me. But I quickly realized that this book was about much more than challah making. It was about how this process can connect us to family, community and spirituality, as well as from generation to generation. 

Travis: Sophia – How do you usually approach illustrating a picture book text? How was working on Rising the same and/or different?

Sophia Vincent Guy: I start a book by sitting down quietly (but also excitedly) with the manuscript and reading through the words.  I have a very visual brain, so I get images immediately when I read.  I let the feeling of the words wash over me and then I start jotting down little sketches in the margins.  The sketches are messy and basic – I don’t spend time making them pretty because drawings come alive for me and guide me more in color.  Then I take out a roll of architecture trace paper and map out the whole book in messy thumbnails.  I take these thumbnails and put them into pages in InDesign and then I dive into each page. I often jump from a really messy sketch into a finished drawing – sometimes the final drawing looks like a finished version of the sketch and sometimes it becomes something else entirely.  I just have to start and then somehow what it needs to be, reveals itself to me.  I enjoy that mystery because you have to keep trusting where you’re being led, which I believe helps you to build trust in your intuition.

Rising felt different from the moment I read the manuscript because of the calm pace.  It doesn’t have this typical story arc, it feels more like an offering to a beautiful and grounding practice that helps us connect with ourselves and one another. Like Sidura, I love to cook, I know what home-cooked food does for a family and for an atmosphere.  I have always baked with my children and when they were too little to cook with me, I carried them in a pouch and cooked with them sleeping on me.  Our family is more on the secular side but we do meet very regularly with our parents for Shabbat dinner and I really love lighting the candles, I feel like it brings peaceful calm energy into our home and it marks a distinct time in the week.   So in short, Rising spoke to me on multiple levels and I knew pretty quickly what I wanted it to feel like.  The first image I finished was page one, that big morning hug with Ima.  That summed it up for me. 

Travis: Final question: What snack puts you in peak creativity mode?

Sidura Ludwig: I don’t snack much when I write, but I drink many, many cups of tea! My go-to is a good-quality English Breakfast or Assam with a splash of milk. I need a warm mug by my side every time I sit down to write.

Sophia Vincent Guy: Similar to Sidura, I need a lot of tea – all kinds: peppermint tea, masala chai, warm lemon water, black tea, green tea – I just need the warmth more than the caffeine. I could easily pair that with some dark chocolate or any kind of biscuit or a medjool date with a walnut or pecan tucked inside.

Travis: Thanks for taking my questions! The Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour is going on all week – click here for info.

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