by Golbarg Bashi, illustrated by Golrokh Nafisi
2018

Reading a good picture book with a child can be a joyful experience. But picture books that privilege indoctrination over imagination aren’t really literature. They betray the bond of trust between adult and child.

by Ibtisam Barakat
2007

The author’s memories of the Six-Day War are poignant, but feelings aren’t history. This memoir inverts responsibility for the war, replacing information with distortion.

by Deborah Ellis
2014

Post-October 7 revelations about UNRWA schools expose the naiveté of this dated account of the Second Intifada. It’s not misunderstanding, but hatred, that underlies the Arab-Israeli conflict.

by Aya Ghanameh, illustrated by Aya Ghanameh
2023

A picture book on Palestinian exile that erases the word “Israel” and falsifies history can have only one goal: to prejudice young readers against Israel and Jews.

by Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri
2022

Ahed Tamimi is not a model of nonviolent resistance — what she describes as an unarmed “grassroots resistance movement” was actually quite violent — but young readers with no background knowledge about the Middle East will be easily misled by her deceptive autobiography.

by Ibtisam Barakat
2010

As a story assigned to young readers in public school classrooms, there are serious concerns about messages of “Uncle Meena” on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Jewish history, and American Jews.

by Jacquetta Nammar Feldman
2022

Children’s books aiming at even-handedness on the Arab-Israeli conflict usually fail – as novels, because they’re didactic, and as political tracts, because they’re inaccurate. This book is a case in point.

by Anthony Robinson and Annemarie Young
2017

Young readers can learn empathy when they listen to the voices of their contemporaries from other cultures. But when the words they hear are full of lies and distortions, they’re not learning empathy – they’re learning hatred.