Copyright Variety
Back in 2022, former Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving sparked an uproar when he posted links to antisemitic tropes on social media. After the point guard initially refused to apologize, the Nets suspended him without pay. At the time, New York-based CNN global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga wasn’t sure what to tell her then-tween son, who idolized the hometown hero and was confused about the rise in cultural figures including Kanye West sharing similar sentiments. “My son asked me, ‘Can I not go to games anymore? Do they not like us? Am I being excluded for being Jewish?’ And I decided to reach out to his school and ask about what resources they had to address antisemitism,” Golodryga recalls. “It was basically ‘Nothing for this age. We encourage them to ask questions themselves, and then once they ask them, maybe we can address it.’ Realistically, I can’t imagine a preteen asking questions like that in class. We just expected more.” As she scoured bookstores and libraries for helpful material, the mother of two found a yawning void for kids in the 8-12 age range. Given her backstory as a Soviet émigré and Emmy-winning journalist who anchors “One World” weekdays at 11 a.m. on CNN International, she had long been encouraged to write a memoir. Instead, she decided to tackle a kid lit novel that tweens like her son might find useful. On Nov. 11, “Don’t Feed the Lion,” which Golodryga co-wrote with Israeli journalist Yonit Levi, hits shelves. The book, which is blurbed by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, charts the ripple effects of a beloved soccer pro making an antisemitic comment that goes viral. For teen protagonist Theo Kaplan, those reverberations hit home when a swastika appears on a school locker, forcing him to speak up rather than remain silent. A year after Irving’s suspension, Golodryga and Levi began writing “Don’t Feed the Lion” following the Oct. 7 terror attacks in southern Israel, which triggered “a spike in antisemitism that I think a lot of us sadly anticipated,” says the CNN anchor, who has reported extensively on the Israel-Gaza conflict. The collaboration gave the two women, who first met while covering the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a chance to process a difficult landscape. “It was a very ambitious goal and idea, and at the very least, we thought, ‘We get to spend time together, at least virtually. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.’ It’s a fictional story, but it’s clearly art imitating life,” Golodryga recalls. “And it came together rather quickly.” Her agents at CAA loved the pitch and early chapters and began submitting the project to publishers. Every literary house rejected it. Some passed on the grounds that middle grade fiction is a tough sell, unlike YA for older teens. Others gave vague feedback about the timing not being right. “We got a number of rejections. I’ll just leave it there,” Golodryga says. “But we were so driven to do this project, and we said, ‘Worst case, we’ll just self-publish.’” Enter Michael Lynton, the former Sony Pictures Entertainment chief and current Snap chairman, who first met Levi, a mother of three, through “Homeland” producer Howard Gordon. Not long after, he sat next to Golodryga at an event, and she talked about the uphill battle she faced in getting a publisher to bite. It turns out the tech mogul had a side hustle as co-owner of a boutique publishing house. In 2018, Lynton, his sister and brother-in-law and a group of investors acquired Arcadia Publishing, best known for its sepia-colored local history books found at every pharmacy and bookstore in America. He asked Golodryga to send him the manuscript. “We just said, ‘This is great. Let’s go.’ It was extremely straightforward and immediate,” Lynton remembers. In today’s hyperpolarized world, some may consider “Don’t Feed the Lion” divisive merely because Levi is Israeli. After all, celebrities and industryites have signed various open letters over the past two years calling for boycotts of Israeli creatives. Lynton doesn’t know if the book will be seen as controversial. “Let’s find out,” he says. “I’m perfectly willing to take that on for a cause like this. This is something that should be in schools and young people should be reading and parents should have available to them.”
