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Summary
Summary
Fourteen-year-old Liyana Abboud loves to hear her father call her habibi--Arabic for darling. But she's not prepared for her family's decision to move from St. Louis to Jerusalem. This provocative first novel from the acclaimed poet builds a bridge to the Arab world, introduces a family readers won't soon forget, and offers a hope for peace.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-9An important first novel from a distinguished anthologist and poet. When Liyana's doctor father, a native Palestinian, decides to move his contemporary Arab-American family back to Jerusalem from St. Louis, 14-year-old Liyana is unenthusiastic. Arriving in Jerusalem, the girl and her family are gathered in by their colorful, warmhearted Palestinian relatives and immersed in a culture where only tourists wear shorts and there is a prohibition against boy/girl relationships. When Liyana falls in love with Omer, a Jewish boy, she challenges family, culture, and tradition, but her homesickness fades. Constantly lurking in the background of the novel is violence between Palestinian and Jew. It builds from minor bureaucratic annoyances and humiliations, to the surprisingly shocking destruction of grandmother's bathroom by Israeli soldiers, to a bomb set off in a Jewish marketplace by Palestinians. It exacts a reprisal in which Liyana's friend is shot and her father jailed. Nye introduces readers to unforgettable characters. The setting is both sensory and tangible: from the grandmother's village to a Bedouin camp. Above all, there is Jerusalem itself, where ancient tensions seep out of cracks and Liyana explores the streets practicing her Arabic vocabulary. Though the story begins at a leisurely pace, readers will be engaged by the characters, the romance, and the foreshadowed danger. Poetically imaged and leavened with humor, the story renders layered and complex history understandable through character and incident. Habibi succeeds in making the hope for peace compellingly personal and concrete...as long as individual citizens like Liyana's grandmother Sitti can say, "I never lost my peace inside."Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Greenwich, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This soul-stirring novel about the Abbouds, an Arab American family, puts faces and names to the victims of violence and persecution in Jerusalem today. Believing the unstable situation in that conflict-ridden city has improved, 14-year-old Liyana's family moves from St. Louis, Mo., to her father's homeland. However, from the moment the Abbouds are stopped by Jewish customs agents at the airport, they face racial prejudice and discord. Initially, Nye (Never in a Hurry) focuses on the Abbouds' handling of conflicting cultural norms between American and Arab values as they settle into their new home (e.g., Liyana's father, Poppy, while forbidding her to wear "short" shorts, reacts in anger toward a relative who asks for Liyana's hand in marriage). Then Liyana tests her family's alleged unprejudiced beliefs when she befriends Omer, a Jewish boy. She wants to introduce him to her father (who taught her, "Does it make sense that any God would choose some people and leave the others out?... God's bigger than that!"), but finds she must first remind him of his own words. Nye expertly combines the Abbouds' gradual acceptance of Omer with a number of heart-wrenching episodes of persecution (by the different warring factions) against her friends and family to convey the extent to which the Arab-Israeli conflict infiltrates every aspect of their lives. Nye's climactic ending will leave readers pondering, long after the last page is turned, why Arabs, Jews, Greeks and Armenians can no longer live in harmony the way they once did. Ages 10-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) Michael Dorris's adult novels Yellow Raft in Blue Water and Cloud Chamber chronicle the deceptions and betrayals that nearly destroy a family, generation after generation. Yellow Raft in Blue Water moves from the present generation of fifteen-year-old Rayona back through two generations of women on her maternal side, while Cloud Chamber opens in nineteenth-century Ireland and moves forward through five generations of Rayona's paternal family. Whereas these two books convey how suffocating and harmful relationships can be, The Window throws itself open to the strengths of familial bonds. From the moment eleven-year-old Rayona sits by the window waiting for the return of her frequently delinquent mother, this novel pulsates forward with an energy and wit that never falters. In lively contrast to Dorris's more somber historical novels for children, the seemingly cocky but vulnerable and emotionally needy Rayona narrates this short novel with a breezy, spunky voice. When her Indian mother does not return from her latest binge to declare their usual "National Holiday" (on which she and Rayona can eat breakfast for supper and practice being best friends), Rayona's philandering black father informs her that her mother has checked into a rehab center, but that he is unable to care for Rayona. Her foster placement with the relentlessly cheerful Potters (Rayona is amazed to discover that "there are actual people like this who aren't on a weekly sitcom") proves short-lived and disastrous; placement with the stolid Mrs. Jackson turns to unexpected fun for them both but is likewise cut short. Rayona senses that her father, in talking with her about his family (with whom she will live next) is "leaving something out, some detail, some secret within a secret, but I am so anxious to find out what happened next, to get to the 'me' part, that I let it go by." The Window is all the "me part," keeping the exuberant narrator squarely in the middle as she finds her place in the secrets of her family. Rayona soon learns that her grandmother (her father's mother) is white-a fact he tells Rayona when he is taking her to meet her grandmother for the first time. Rayona resolves not to miss another word for the rest of her life. Sitting in the window seat of the airplane, she understands that she will never again "be able to look out a small window and see [her] whole world from it." With the introduction of Rayona's great-grandmother, the ancient and proper Mamaw, her sensible and wise Aunt Edna, and her grandmother Marcella (a "vanilla Hostess cupcake" of a woman), Dorris's novel becomes yet more unguarded as these three women embrace their young relative with unconditional love. No scene feels more genuinely celebratory than when her aunt and grandmother travel west with Rayona to return her home. Having installed a device atop their car to provide cool air-a contrivance that re-quires the windows to be rolled up-the three must shout to be heard, causing a cacophony of "beg your pardons." When Grand-mother opens the window, thinking to be chastised but instead winning the approval of everyone as the cooler sails away, all three break into hilarity and song. Without glos-sing over the hurt and pain of parental abandonment, this novel of open win-dows is a joy, a "national holiday" to which we can return any day of the week. s.p.b. Picture Books Marc Brown Arthur's Computer Disaster; illus. by the author (Preschool, Younger) Arthur knows he's not supposed to be using his mother's computer, but the lure of Deep, Dark Sea, "the greatest game in the universe," is irresistible. Predictably, the computer breaks; luckily, it's easy to fix; reassuringly, Mom is not mad, just disappointed. She decrees that there will be no computer gaming for a week-at least for Arthur: "'I'll be right up,' called Mom. 'As soon as I blast these skeletons from the treasure chest.'" "Adapted by Marc Brown from a teleplay by Joe Fallon," this story of mild disaster followed by mild reproof will be a pleasant diversion for fans of the popular TV personality. r.s. Eve Bunting Ducky; illus. by David Wisniewski (Preschool) David Wisniewski's Caldecott-winning paper-cutting talents get a comedic workout here, illustrating Bunting's slightly sly text about a plastic duck who, along with thousands of fellow bathtub toys, is washed overboard when a storm hits the freighter ferrying them across the ocean (Bunting supplies a note about the factual event that inspired the story). The duck tells the story ("Our ship has disappeared. The sea is big, big, big. Oh, I am scared!"), including an unfortunate encounter with a shark ("It shakes its head and spits us out. I expect we are not too tasty, though we are guaranteed non-toxic") and the basic existential dilemma of a bathtub toy out of its element: "I wish we could swim and get away. But all we can do is float." The ocean's currents eventually bring the duck to shore alongside many of his compatriots, and he finally achieves his destiny, floating in the security of a bubblebath. This is an out-of-the way excursion for both author and illustrator, and if Wisniewski's pictures are sometimes too weighty for Bunting's buoyant text, they are certainly splashy enough. r.s. H Peter Collington A Small Miracle (Younger) The creator of On Christmas Eve (reviewed 11/90) revisits that significant night in another masterfully executed wordless picture book. The artist's trademark sequential frames make the experience of turning the pages like watching a movie; this time it's a gripping, matter-of-factly magical story of charity and selflessness rewarded. In the midst of a bustling, prosperous contemporary village, a desperate old woman loses every-thing when she sells her sole prized possession-her accordion-and then is robbed. On her way home, she encounters the same thief attempting (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Liyana Abboud, 14, and her family make a tremendous adjustment when they move to Jerusalem from St. Louis. All she and her younger brother, Rafik, know of their Palestinian father's culture come from his reminiscences of growing up and the fighting they see on television. In Jerusalem, she is the only ``outsider'' at an Armenian school; her easygoing father, Poppy, finds himself having to remind her--often against his own common sense--of rules for ``appropriate'' behavior; and snug shops replace supermarket shopping--the malls of her upbringing are unheard of. Worst of all, Poppy is jailed for getting in the middle of a dispute between Israeli soldiers and a teenage refugee. In her first novel, Nye (with Paul Janeczko, I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, 1996, etc.) shows all of the charms and flaws of the old city through unique, short-story-like chapters and poetic language. The sights, sounds, and smells of Jerusalem drift through the pages and readers glean a sense of current Palestinian-Israeli relations and the region's troubled history. In the process, some of the passages become quite ponderous while the human story- -Liyana's emotional adjustments in the later chapters and her American mother's reactions overall--fall away from the plot. However, Liyana's romance with an Israeli boy develops warmly, and readers are left with hope for change and peace as Liyana makes the city her very own. (Fiction. 12+)
Booklist Review
Gr. 6^-10. What is it like to be young in Palestine today? That is the focus of this stirring docunovel, which breaks new ground in YA fiction. Liyana Abboud, 14, moves with her family from St. Louis to Jerusalem. For her physician father, it is going home to where he was born and educated. To Liyana, her younger brother, and her American mother, it is a huge upheaval. At first Liyana misses the U.S., can't speak the languages, and feels uncertain at school, "tipped between" the cultures. She is awkward with her bossy grandmother ("Sitti") and overwhelmed by her huge extended family when she visits their village on the West Bank. The military occupation is always there and the simmering conflict between Jew and Arab. In one horrifying scene, Israeli soldiers tear into Sitti's house and smash her bathroom. In a climactic episode, after a Palestinian bomb has injured civilians, the Israelis shoot an innocent boy in the leg, and Liyana's father is held in prison overnight. Yet it doesn't have to be that way. Liyana meets and loves a Jewish boy, and together they join the Jews and Arabs trying to make peace. Nye is an Arab American author and anthologist, and, as in her fine essay collection, Never in a Hurry (1996), she writes from a unique perspective, as the American newcomer/observer and as the displaced Palestinian in occupied territory. The story is steeped in detail about the place and cultures: food, geography, history, shopping, schools, languages, religions, etc. Just when you think it is obtrusive to have essays and journal entries thrust into the story, you get caught up in the ideas and the direct simplicity with which Nye speaks. She does try to cover too much--no book can tell the whole story of the Middle East--but this is a story that makes us "look both ways." --Hazel Rochman