• A Little Piece of Ground

    by Elizabeth Laird
    2016

    A story of the Second Intifada that demonizes and dehumanizes Israelis has no place in education. Yet that is exactly what Elizabeth Laird’s A Little Piece of Ground, now required reading in Newark public schools, does.

  • Amazing Women of the Middle East: 25 Stories from Ancient Times to Present Day

    by Wafa’ Tarnowska

    2021

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    Young readers deserve to learn about talented, ambitious women, but erasing Israel from the map and Jewish women from the Middle East falsifies history and geography.

  • Baba, What Does My Name Mean? A Journey to Palestine

    by Rifk Ebeid
    2020

    Erasing Israel, Jerusalem and Hebron from the map makes for bad geography. Clumsy rhymes and rhythms make for worse literature.

  • Baddawi

    by Leila Abdelrazaq
    2015

    Young readers should learn about the exile of Palestinians, but the story should be based on facts. Myths, hearsay, omissions and distortions don’t constitute history. They constitute propaganda.

  • Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine

    by Ibtisam Barakat
    2016

    A memoir of war and dislocation can arouse sympathy in young readers, but the author’s hardships are no excuse for twisting international law and erasing Jewish history from the land of Israel.

  • Code Name: Butterfly

    by Ahlam Bsharat, translated by Nancy Roberts
    2016

    A novel for teens that idolizes terrorists as martyrs and erases Israeli suffering inverts the realities of the Middle East conflict.  It doesn’t belong in the hands of impressionable young readers.

  • Determined to Stay

    by Jody Sokolower
    2021

    The book is based on visits Jody Sokolower and her daughter Ericka made to Israel and the West Bank to “research” the situation of Arabs in East Jerusalem. It is a propagandistic book informed by Sokolower’s pre-existing bias – she promotes BDS against Israel – rather than by any objective research.

  • Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine

    by Hannah Moushabeck, illustrated by Reem Madooh
    2023

    The author’s nostalgic account of her father’s childhood in East Jerusalem is marred by a pernicious agenda: To erase Israel, Jews, and Hebrew from Jerusalem and prejudice young readers against Israel.

  • Ida in the Middle

    by Nora Lester Murad

    2022

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    Young readers identify with a character who feels lonely and rejected at school, but when that character promotes anti-Israel lies, the book is propaganda, and doesn’t belong in the classroom.

Featured author: Naomi shihab nye

Maligning Israel for young readers

The books we read as children stay with us all our lives. In our earliest stories, big, bad wolves threaten innocent children – and few of us grow up with warm, fuzzy feelings about wolves. Replace that wolf with an Israeli soldier, and you have an indelible image. That is the danger of the writings of Palestinian-American children’s poet and novelist Naomi Shihab Nye.