Steve Sheinkin | |
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 Sheinkin at the 2019 Texas Book Festival |
Steve Sheinkin is an American author of suspenseful history books for young adults. A former textbook writer, Sheinkin began writing full-time nonfiction books for young readers in 2008. His work has been praised for making historical information more accessible.[1]
Sheinkin has written and illustrated three fictional graphic novels about Rabbi Harvey, a fictional Jewish rabbi who also functions as an Old West sheriff, using Jewish rabbinical wisdom to solve problems usually solved with firearms in the fictional Rocky Mountain town of Elk Spring, Colorado. The books, which were published through Jewish Lights Publishing, consist of The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey, Rabbi Harvey Rides Again, and Rabbi Harvey vs. the Wisdom Kid.[2] The eclectic stories, which combine Jewish legends and frontier legends, sprung from Sheinkin's own eclectic childhood as a Jewish-American boy raised on both Jewish folktales and American Westerns. The character of Rabbi Harvey also contains elements of the author's own father, David Sheinkin.[3]
Sheinkin's nonfiction books, Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon[4] and The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights,[5] were both National Book Award finalists. In 2013, Bomb also won the Newbery Honor and Sibert Medal from the American Library Association. The Port Chicago 50 won the Carter G. Woodson Book Award in 2015.[6] His 2015 book, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, was also a finalist for the National Book Award, and was called “easily the best study of the Vietnam War available for teen readers.[7] In 2020, he won the Margaret A. Edwards Award.[8]
