Neshama

Will touch the soul of anyone who has ever felt different

Editor’s Note:

Every poem, every word, in Marcella Pixley’s novel in verse, NESHAMA, is hauntingly beautiful. This is the middle grade novel that I needed as a child. Readers will believe in ghosts and the power of prayer and also what it means to forgive and to accept yourself. It is as if Neshama set an extra seat at Bubbe’s Shabbat table for the reader where they can taste the soup, the challah, and hear the whispers of the ghosts of her ancestors.

Author’s Note:

When I started writing NESHAMA, I spent hours sitting on the dock in Gloucester, looking out at the water and thinking about how the tides rise and fall every day whether we there to appreciate it or not. I wondered about what my ancestors would want to say to me if they could reach back through the years. What would they want to share about their stories? What messages would they have for me about what they loved and what they left behind? I began taking a notebook down to the water and imagining that we could write poems back and forth to each other.

I imagined they would begin by telling me what they missed most about being alive. Then maybe they might tell me about how it felt to be alive in the old country, or as a new immigrant trying to balance assimilation with tradition. NESHAMA started as an experiment in talking with ghosts. I wrote ghost poems every day that first summer. As I wrote, new questions emerged from the tides and the shadows: How do we find the bravery to express who we are? Why does it matter whether or not we learn to pray? What do we leave behind? How can we heal from the hurt of antisemitism? What is the connection between healing and forgiveness?

In NESHAMA, eleven year old Anna learns that it takes bravery to express all of the different parts of who we are, especially when our parents might have chosen to turn their backs and bury the hurt. My hope is that Anna will give readers permission to embrace their own family stories, treasure the voices of our ancestors and find the bravery to express our unique identities and our own bright neshama in this generation.

Excerpt printed with permission. Neshama, by Marcella Pixley, Published by Candlewick, May 13, 2025.

The Soup Pot

Bubbe lifts the lid

and lets the steam rise

into the kitchen.

This battered soup pot

dented from its journey

from an apartment in Brooklyn

to Bubbe’s old kitchen

in Gloucester Massachusetts

where I stand transfixed

watching the broth bubble.

Bubbe gives me a sip.

When you taste my soup,

close your eyes, she says.

Imagine my mama, 

her hair covered by a kerchief, 

stirring Shabbos 

with a wooden spoon,

One generation 

sipping the broth

of the one that came before.

Blessing

Then she strikes the match,

circles her hands

above the flickering glow,

and covers her eyes

to whisper the Shabbos prayer,

Baruch atah Adonai

Eloheinu Melech Haolam.

The real blessing

is that the prayer has lasted 

so many years

like the spiderweb

of this white lace

woven with a silk

that is at once incredibly fragile

and as strong as a story

told over and over

from a mother’s mouth

to a daughter’s ear

one generation after another.

Bio: Marcella Fleischman Pixley is the award winning author of five acclaimed novels for young people including TROWBRIDGE ROAD (Candlewick 2020) which was long listed for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award and the Golden Dome Award. It was also a Junior Library Guild Gold standard Selection as well as a Shelf Awareness and Mighty Girl Best Book for 2020. Marcella teaches 8th grade Language Arts in Massachusetts where she lives with her family. NESHAMA is Marcella's first novel in verse.

✡️

5 Tiny Delights:

1) Blowing on milkweed

2) Walking in the woods

3) Finding shards of pottery at low tide

4) The words "palimpsest" and "salamander"

5) Bats at dusk

✡️

5 Tiny Jewish Delights:

1) The flickering light from Shabbat candles

2) The taste of apples and honey

3) Yiddish songs my grandma used to sing

4) Matzo ball soup

5) Old photographs

✡️