From Jennifer Rosner, National Jewish Book Award Finalist and author of The Yellow Bird Sings, comes a novel based on the true stories of children stolen in the wake of World War II.

In Poland, as World War II rages, a mother hides with her young daughter, a musical prodigy whose slightest sound may cost them their lives.

The Messy Self challenges the idea -- and the ideal -- of a coherent, harmonious self. Taken together, the essays illustrate how a flourishing self is inevitably divided, ambivalent, fractured, messy -- and how the self triumphs through disorder.

Hidden children of the Holocaust, including Marcel Frydman, Fred Kader, and Tom Jaeger, who gathered in the US, years after the war. (Facebook)

There is nothing simple about being a self.

For my 4-year-old daughter, Juliet, hearing is optional.

Sophia was born perfect. I had six hours of untempered joy before the routine ALGO test, now widely used to screen newborns for hearing impairment, hinted at a serious problem.

When her daughters were born deaf, a hearing mother faced a choice between spoken language and sign.

From Caroline Leavitt: Jennifer Rosner wrote an extraordinary memoir about being the mother of two deaf children, but it's really more than that. It's truly a novel about what it means to be heard, how deafness is passed on through history and the controversy around sign language and cochlear implants. I was so knocked out by Rosner's book that I asked her if she'd write a guest blog, and she agreed. Many thanks, Jennifer.

This past Yom Kippur, my daughters and I wrote lists; each of us detailed the ways in which we hoped to improve ourselves in the coming year.