The Lemon Tree (Young Readers' Edition): An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East - Hardcover

Tolan, Sandy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1547603941 ISBN 13: 9781547603947

Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2020

Synopsis

In 1967, a twenty-five-year-old refugee named Bashir Khairi traveled from the Palestinian hill town of Ramallah to Ramla, Israel, with a goal: to see the beloved stone house with the lemon tree in its backyard that he and his family had been forced to leave nineteen years earlier. When he arrived, he was greeted by one of its new residents: Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student whose family had fled Europe following the Holocaust. She had lived in that house since she was eleven months old.
On the stoop of this shared house, Dalia and Bashir began a surprising friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and later tested as political tensions ran high and Israelis and Palestinians each asserted their own right to live on this land. Adapted from the award-winning adult book and based on Sandy Tolan's extensive research and reporting, The Lemon Tree is a deeply personal story of two people seeking hope, transformation, and home.

About this title

Reviews

Gr 6 Up—In this young readers' adaptation of the 2007 book, Tolan details the true story of the unexpected friendship between Bashir Khairi, a Palestinian man of Arab ancestry, and Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, an Israeli woman of Jewish descent. These two individuals found they shared a connection. Their families lived in the same stone house at different time periods. Nineteen years before Landau's family moved in, Khairi's family lived in the house. During the formation of Israel in 1948, six-year-old Khairi and his family were forced to flee their hometown. Landau and her family relocated from Europe to Israel after World War II. In 1967, soon after the Six-Day War, Khairi and Landau met as young adults. For a time, they maintained a tenuous friendship and an openness to conversation. Tolan deftly explores both sides of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He connects news stories to real people and describes the mental, emotional, and physical impact of violence, occupation, and forced relocation. Although the text would have benefitted from a time line and a little more explanation about Zionism, the compelling narrative provides readers with insight into an impossible situation. Front matter includes territorial maps and information about Tolan's research methods; back matter features an annotated list of books, articles, and films on the topic, as well as an extensive list of sources. VERDICT Tolan makes an incredibly complicated topic comprehensible, creating empathy and understanding for people on both sides of the conflict.—Sarah Reid, Four County Lib. Syst., NY

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's Books
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1547603941
• ISBN 13: 9781547603947
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208