Book Review: Don’t Feed The Lion by Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi (Estimated read time: 2 minutes)

Review: Don’t Feed The Lion by Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi (Estimated read time: 2 minutes)


My thanks to NetGalley and Arcadia Publishing for providing an Advanced Reader’s Copy.

Childhood is rarely simple. Most of us remember the awkwardness of those preteen and teenage years—the uncertainty, the longing to belong, the sting of every slight, real or imagined. Now place yourself back in that fragile space and imagine seeing your locker at school defaced with a swastika painted across it. What does a 13-year-old do with that kind of hate?

In Don’t Feed The Lion, journalists Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi take that moment and widen it into a timely, deeply human story about antisemitism, courage, grief, and the fragile ways young people build meaning when the world shows them its ugliest side.


Theo, a Jewish teenager and gifted soccer player, is thrust into a crisis he never asked for. His response is not heroic in the cinematic sense—it is confused, painful, halting, and honest. Which is precisely why it works. Theo’s journey feels real, and through him the authors give young readers a vocabulary for experiences that too many kids are already navigating.

Standing beside him is Annie, his 11-year-old sister—sharp, outspoken, and determined to confront bigotry wherever she finds it. She doesn’t yet realize how close to home this particular act of hate hits, and her righteous crusade becomes one of the book’s most compelling threads. Annie is the kind of character who makes an adult reader quietly wonder: would I be as brave?

Enter Gabe, newly arrived from North Carolina and grieving the recent death of his mother. Between an estranged father and an older brother doing his best to hold the family together, Gabe becomes the emotional counterweight of the novel—lost but resilient, looking for friends, grounding, and any trace of normal. His connection with Theo adds depth and texture to the narrative instead of cliché.


Together, this ensemble—kids, parents, grandparents, siblings—creates a story that feels lived in, tender, and painfully relevant. As actress Gal Gadot observes, this is a book we need right now. And CNN Anchor and New York Times best selling author Jake Tapper is right: it gives young people tools to recognize and confront hate rather than absorb it.


I received an advance copy through NetGalley and Arcadia, only a few chapters in, immediately recommended it to my local library. This is a book that belongs on every youth-section shelf. Not because it is simply “important,” but because it is honest. It respects its young readership enough to give them a hard story told with care—and the reassurance that they are not powerless
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Don’t Feed The Lion reminds us that hatred thrives on silence. And that, sooner or later, each of us is asked to choose: to look away or to stand against bigotry, racism, antisemitism, and injustice. Golodryga and Levi offer not just a narrative but a call to conscience—told through the eyes of kids who show us, again, what moral clarity looks like.

Rating: Five Stars 

Charles Francis, 12/6/2025