Excerpt from Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher copyright © 2010 by David Goldin.

When I saw this title, I couldn’t resist. Who could? “Baxter: the Pig Who Wanted to be Kosher” is a story of misunderstandings, welcome, and community. 

Baxter the Pig sits at a bus stop with a man who cannot stop talking about the joys of Shabbat dinner.  Baxter is immediately intrigued and wants to experience a Shabbat dinner for himself.  Then the man breaks the bad news: Baxter can’t be part of Shabbat dinner because “pigs aren’t kosher.”  Then Baxter begins his quest to “become” kosher by eating voluminous amounts of kosher pickles, challah, and more…only to learn that it might be good that he’s not kosher.  Who wants to be eaten at a Shabbat meal?  The moral of the story? Anyone (kosher, non-kosher, Jew, non-Jew, stranger, friend) can come to Shabbat dinner and our community, our global community, is better for it.

I caught up with Laurel Snyder, the author of “Baxter” to get the story behind the story.

PRK: Where did you get the idea for “Baxter?”
LS: You know, it’s hard to make a dent in the world these days. There is so much going on and this book was a crazy, silly idea.  I was standing at outside my child’s pre-school and the idea just popped into my head. I mentioned it to a friend and she laughed and I just went home. I had been trying to write a book for the intermarriage world in the Jewish community and honestly, I didn’t think of Baxter as an intermarriage title but after I wrote it, I looked back and realized…..it was.

Excerpt from Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher copyright © 2010 by David Goldin.

PRK: Did you grow up kosher?
LS: I grew up in a family that wasn’t kosher and I lived in Israel for awhile. It was there that I experienced kashrut (kosher dietary laws). As a set of dietary laws, I never found it [kashrut] problematic but I became aware that it divided the community when I worked at the Hillel at the University of Iowa.

PRK: How did it divide the community?
LS: At Iowa’s Hillel, the house keeps kosher and it was the only kosher kitchen in Iowa City. So people who kept kosher who were driving across the country would plan their trip in order to stop in Iowa City to eat in our kosher kitchen. But then there were people who didn’t keep kosher at all and they felt excluded when they weren’t able to bring in food they bought or cooked into the Hillel house.

PRK: So how did you channel this experience into “Baxter?”
LS: For Baxter, this is a story about misunderstandings but it’s also a story about a place and a time…for everything When I worked at the Hillel, I didn’t really have a high level understanding of Judaism. I was very self-educated. The director of Hillel and the man to whom “Baxter” is dedicated, Jerry Sorokin, was amazing. He made me feel like asking questions was such a GIFT. I want to get that across in this book. Kids should be unafraid to ask these questions and the great thing about Baxter is that he is SO ignorant, he simply doesn’t mind asking a lot of questions.

Excerpt from Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher copyright © 2010 by David Goldin.

PRK: What do you hope people get out of this book?
LS: Baxter learns that not everything is kosher, and that is OK. I want people to find ways to be as inclusive as possible, there are often fewer barriers in life…we sometimes think of things as bigger barriers than they need to be.

PRK: What have people been telling you about “Baxter?”
LS: It’s been received very well. I was doing a reading at a festival where I live, in Atlanta, and my independent bookstore sold all of my books before the festival even started. I said to the owner “That is weird; this bookstore isn’t even in a Jewish neighborhood,” and the bookseller responded, “I don’t think of “Baxter” as a Jewish book.” “Baxter” is a story about questioning and communicating and learning that often, there is NO right way. “Baxter” has been the same kind of experience for me. I started life as a poet but this little pig who wanted to kosher made me a Jewish picture book writer.

• To learn more about Laurel Snyder and all of her books, click HERE.

Excerpt from Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher copyright © 2010 by David Goldin. Published by Tricycle Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. All rights reserved.