They all write for adults.

But-and you may have missed this unless you're a parent or a kids' librarian-there are also talented Chicago Jewish authors writing for children and teens.

Here's a look at three of them who have recently received recognition for their work.

When last year's Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award was announced, you could probably hear the jubilation in Deerfield all the way to the Wisconsin border. The winner was an as-yet- unpublished author named Brenda A. Ferber, who received the prestigious honor for "Cara's Kitchen," a book about a young Jewish girl struggling with grief and her relationship to G-d.

The Sydney Taylor Awards are given annually by the Association of Jewish Libraries for the best published children's book and the best children's book manuscript. They're designed to promote quality Jewish literature for children and to memorialize Taylor, the author of the "All-of-a-Kind Family" books, considered to be the first mainstream Judaic children's literature. The prizes were established by Taylor's husband, Ralph Taylor, in 1968. (The manuscript award has been given only since 1985). This year marks the 100th anniversary of Sydney Taylor's birth.

The manuscript prize, which carries a cash award of $1,000, is for the best fiction for readers ages 8 to 11 by an unpublished author. The award further stipulates that the book should have "universal appeal of Jewish content for readers ... both Jewish and non-Jewish" and should "reveal positive aspects of Jewish life."

"Cara's Kitchen," the judges felt, met all of these criteria. It is the story of 11-year-old Cara Segal, whose mother and sister have recently died in a house fire. Cara is struggling with her grief, questioning G-d's role and trying to find her way back to something approaching normal life.

With the help of her best friend and her own inner strength, she eventually brings her mother's cookie business back to life, rebuilds her relationship with her father, finds her way back to G-d and Judaism and emerges with a hopeful outlook on life.

The book is aimed at children ages 8- 12 but Ferber hopes that "adults can enjoy it too," she said during a recent interview. The idea for the novel "came from three places," Ferber, an energetic 37- year-old self-described "mom and writer" who looks more like a college student, says. (She is no relation to Edna, a distinguished Jewish literary predecessor with the same last name.)

To begin with, Brenda Ferber says, "when I was a kid, I was obsessed with the fragile nature of life-the idea that we all could die and terrible things could happen."

This despite the fact that she grew up in a happy Conservative Jewish family in Highland Park and didn't experience any tragedy as a youngster. "I didn't have any reason to (worry), but I think a lot of kids think that way," she says. "But there was nothing (in children's literature) about Jewish grief or the feelings that were inside me when I was growing up."

Ferber earned a degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan and met and married her husband Alan, an employee of a cellular phone company. The second impetus for the book came when the couple began trying to have children and experienced infertility.

"That was a really hard time in my life," she says. "I had never experienced grief except for a very old grandparent, and in a way I was experiencing grief. I felt that G-d had abandoned me. Then at some point I realized he hadn't really abandoned me- he was crying alongside me. That change of perspective helped me get through infertility and stuck with me. I always had that knowledge that G-d was on my side."

Today the family has three children, an 8-year-old and 10-year-old twins.

Solidifying the idea for "Cara's Kitchen" was a tragic event that happened when the Ferbers were living in Texas several years ago. A father and son died in a house fire in their neighborhood. Ferber didn't know the family, but says that as she drove by the burnt-out house, "I wondered about the surviving family members, wondered if they were feeling some of the same things I had felt. Did they feel G-d had abandoned them?"

Shortly afterward she came up with the idea for her book. "Only it was about a Jewish girl," she says. "I was able to pour my heart into it because it was something I had thought about my whole life. There's a lot about the mother- daughter relationship and the father- daughter relationship. I drew on my own relationships with my parents and my relationship as a mother with my own kids."

It was her first attempt at a novel, although she has written short stories for children. Several have been published in Ladybug, a magazine for children.

Ferber heard about the Sydney Taylor Award from her "critique partner," Carol Grannick. The two women met through the Illinois Chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and have been working together for two years, meeting every two weeks to give each other helpful feedback on their progress. It works because "we are very hard on each other, very tough," Ferber says.

Winning the manuscript award "validated me, my story and my effort," she says. Even though she wanted to be a writer from her grade school days, she says she wasn't sure whether she really had it in her, sometimes feeling like "Cara's Kitchen" was "nothing but sentimental junk" and at other times that "maybe I was creating something real and powerful."

Winning the award also provided an important lesson for her children, Ferber says. "They've seen me working at writing and they've seen the billions of rejections I've received. I hope I'm teaching them by example that you can't give up on your dreams. I won't let anything get in the way of my dream, and I think it's a real good example for them."

Now Ferber's dream-and reality-has expanded. Although the Sydney Taylor Award doesn't guarantee publication, it often helps to get a manuscript noticed by a publisher. That's what happened to her when she submitted her book to Farrar Strauss & Giroux, a major publisher of both adult and children's literature. She sent the book to an editor she had heard speaking at a conference; the editor loved the book and made Ferber an offer for publication. The book will come out in spring 2006 under the title, "Julia's Kitchen."

Ferber, meanwhile, is working on a new novel set at an overnight camp and looking forward to the publication of the first one, which she hopes will have a universal, not just Jewish appeal.

"You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy it, that's what I was going for," she says. "I liked the idea of non-Jewish people seeing what life is like when you're Jewish."

And her even larger purpose, she says, is to let children know that they're not alone in their fears and worries. "I knew I wasn't the only kid who recognized how fragile life was," she says. "Especially after 9/11, every child worries. Every child has these fears. And sadly, for some children, these fears become reality.

"I wrote this book for children everywhere to say to them, I know this world can be a scary place. But don't lose faith. G-d is on your side. And somehow or other we get through it. We all survive."

Esther Hershenhorn calls herself "the Susan Lucci of children's books." The Lincoln Park woman didn't sell a book until she was past 50.

Now she has had four children's books published, and one, "Chicken Soup By Heart," won a Sidney Taylor Book Award (this one is for a published book, not a manuscript).

Although not all of Hershenhorn's books have Jewish themes, "Chicken Soup," as one might expect from the title, does-sort of.

Aimed at children from preschool to third grade, the book, which has illustrations by Rosanne Litzinger, is about a young boy, Rudie Dinkins, who discovers one day that his babysitter, Mrs. Gittel, has the flu.

He decides he is going to make her feel better and gets ready to cook up a batch of chicken soup for her. With his mother's help, he adds the secret ingredient: three stories about their friendship. Or, as Hershenhorn herself puts it, "it turns out the secret ingredient is love-forget the onions and tomatoes."

When Rudie delivers the chicken soup to Mrs. Gittel, she is soon feeling as good as new. The next day, when Rudie has a tummy ache, Mrs. Gittel helps him feel better with another batch of chicken soup containing the secret ingredients: stories and love.

A reviewer for School Library Journal called the book, which was published by Simon & Schuster, a "folksy telling (that) is as comfortable as a grandmother's embrace."

The genesis of the story was an article she saw in a Jewish newspaper about women arguing over the ingredients for the best chicken soup, Hershenhorn said during a phone conversation from Los Angeles, where she was attending the national convention of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. "It got me thinking," she says. "Out of that came this intergenerational story about a little boy and his babysitter."

Hershenhorn, a former journalist and grade school teacher who grew up in Philadelphia, says the book was especially meaningful to her because she dedicated it to her "Philadelphia family"-her parents, brother and sister.

"My mother always wanted to be a writer," she says, "and now I was able to show her this book with her name in print. My father spent his life telling us about being Jews and going to Hebrew school, and now this book will be in every Hebrew school."

Even though Hershenhorn says she doesn't generally think of her characters as being either Jewish or non-Jewish, Mrs. Gittel is definitely Jewish and sprinkles her conversation with "oys." In addition, the author says, "this is taking place in Brooklyn, and it uses a Yiddish construct in storytelling-Mrs. Gittel tells a story the way you would tell a Jewish tale. She inverts the word order and that kind of thing."

At the end of the book there is a recipe for chicken soup that Hershenhorn calls "a combination of my mother's and (Jewish cook book author and TV show host) Joan Nathan's."

Nevertheless, Hershenhorn says she didn't think of "Chicken Soup" as a "Jewish" book until the Library of Congress so classified it-making it eligible for the Sydney Taylor Award as well.

"It's a book about love," she says.

Her other books have been an eclectic bunch. "There Goes Lowell's Party" incorporates Ozark weather lore into the story of a young boy waiting to see if his relatives will make it to his birthday party. "The Confe$$ions and $ecret$ of Howard J. Fingerhut" (this is correct) is a kind of parody of how- to manuals using the story of a young boy's attempts to chronicle the success of his lawn care business and win a prize for junior businessperson of the year. "Fancy That" is the story of a traveling artist who paints portraits, walls and signs.

In addition to her own writing, Hershenhorn, who has a grown son, teaches writing for children at the University of Chicago Writer's Studio, the Newberry Library and Ragdale, an artists' residency program in Lake Forest. She coaches children's book authors, is on the board of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and heads the organization's Illinois chapter, which has 900 members. She also consults and helps to develop curriculum for the Chicago Public Schools' writing and literary magnet schools and gives presentations to teachers and librarians on how to use writing to help children tell their own stories.

The children's book world is "a wonderful, vital, sharing community," Hershenhorn says. "I spend my days doing what I love and loving what I do."

First-time author Larry Stillman never intended to write a book about the Holocaust. But when he stumbled on a story that had never before been told, he couldn't resist turning it into a book.

Now the Lake Forest man has received recognition from several quarters for his book, "A Match Made in Hell: The Jewish Boy and the Polish Outlaw Who Defied the Nazis" (University of Wisconsin Press), which is aimed at teens and young adults.

The true story was a finalist in the 2003 non-fiction category from the Society of Midland Authors. It was selected by the New York Public Library for inclusion on its Books for the Teen Ager 2004 list and was one of 29 titles designated "The Best of the Best of the University Presses" by the Association of American University Presses, which recommends the titles to school libraries.

A Booklist reviewer said the story "grips you with its searing action at the same time (as) it raises crucial moral issues."

Stillman himself spent most of his working life engaged in writing of a different sort: He was in the advertising business. By the time he was in his 50s, he was the creative director of the one of the area's largest advertising agencies, but felt he was "over the hill" and went into consulting. Still, an unfulfilled ambition nagged at him.

"I had really wanted to write books all my life," he said in a recent telephone interview. "But that was hard to do when you've got a 15-hour-a-day job."

He didn't recognize the opportunity right away, but was simply fascinated by a retired fabric cutter named Morris Goldner whom he met when Goldner and Stillman's wife shared studio space in a building in Lake Forest. Goldner, who lives in West Rogers Park, had come out of retirement to cut fabric for a designer.

Goldner and Stillman's wife "saw each other every day for a couple of years," Stillman relates. "Finally she asked him if he was Jewish and if he was in Europe during the war. She has very good Jewish radar and figured him to be a survivor."

It turns out that Goldner was a survivor of a most unusual sort. As he gradually revealed his story to Stillman, "I realized I had enough material to write a book," he says.

Goldner's story began when he and his family were routed from their small Polish farming village by the Nazis. Goldner, who was 16 but so slight that he looked much younger, fled into the forest and eventually met his father there. They survived together until a former friend gave the authorities information about their hiding place. Then Goldner's father was killed and he was wounded and left for dead.

The teenager was rescued by a legendary non-Jewish bandit, Jan Kopec, who was also in hiding because of his criminal activities. Kopec took Goldner under his wing and the two spent 18 months hiding in the forest, evading both the Nazis and the government authorities.

Kopec trained Goldner as his accomplice in robberies and black market activities (where he often passed as a 9- or 10-year-old Polish boy), then as a saboteur for a shadowy resistance group, even blowing up trains on their way to concentration camps. Eventually Goldner was liberated, but he lost track of Kopec. When he tried to visit him after the war, the outlaw's wife sent him away and he was never able to see his former rescuer and protector.

Stillman discovered that Goldner had never told his story to anyone until 1996, when Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah project videotaped his reminiscences. Even then, he only revealed "the tip of the iceberg," Stillman says.

Determined to tell Goldner's story, Stillman left his consulting business and spent several years working on the book. What so drew him to the material, he says, is that "this is more than just a survivor story. The other personality fascinated me-this criminal. These were two very unlikely people, a nearly 40-year-old bandit and a 17-year-old Jewish teenager. What's really unique about this is the juxtaposition of two personalities and how they became so co-dependent. It's a good adventure story and a great character study of two unlikely people that happened to take place during the Holocaust."

Although Stillman always believed that Goldner's stories were true, he says he needed to confirm what he was told and to find out more before he could finish his book. He visited Poland and spent five days on the trail of the principals in the stories. Since Jan Kopec had died shortly after the war was over, there were no written records of his exploits, but Stillman thought he might still meet someone who knew him or Goldner.

He did meet some villagers who knew Kopec, as well as several members of his family, who had never known that he was a bandit. Although many unanswered questions remained, Stillman was satisfied that Goldner's story was true.

"I never thought he was making it up," he says, although he acknowledges that some survivors have questioned the tale's veracity. In Poland, "I confirmed a few things that nobody else knew. Besides," he adds, "Goldner is not an educated man. He doesn't have the imagination to make this up. I'm not being condescending, it's just a statement of fact. I confirmed enough things to verify it and there is no doubt in my mind that everything he said happened, if not exactly as he told it, then darn close."

Today Goldner recalls that "he never thought he would live through the war. Every day he was sure he would die. He says now, why was I chosen? Why was I allowed to live through this? He has the typical survivor guilt," Stillman says.

The story has an appeal on different levels to different reading audiences, Stillman believes. "It's an adventure story-that's the hook that makes teens fascinated with reading it," he says. "They're spellbound."

But what he hopes all readers get out of the book is "a better understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust. It's taught in schools, and they've heard a lot about the camps, but probably not too much about the people who lived in the forest. This could help them realize that these horrors really did happen."

He also thinks it is important for readers to realize that "there was a group of Jews who fought back. Goldner was taking delight in doing this, striking back at the Germans who killed his family.