Editorial

Dear Bookbird Readers,

Understanding that the world's children are innocent was a powerful source of inspiration to Jella Lepman's work. This issue of Bookbird focuses primarily on the children's literature of the Middle East with this idea in the forefront. A converging theme that ribbons through the articles here includes the importance of writing and literature as a way to establish identity and hold on to one's dreams and hopes. Literature offers the promise of providing the self and the other with a shared frame of reference to promote understanding and dialogue. Other intersecting ideas include the important role literature can play in helping us to see ourselves in others, to acknowledge different ways of being, and to recognize the interdependence of self and other as crucial to survival.

Feature articles

The first three articles serve as a trilogy that highlight the work of two authors of literature about the Arab world; Palestinian born author, Ibtisam Barakat and U.S. author, Elsa Marston. In forty days of mourning we step into the shoes of author Ibtisam Barakat as she reveals her journey remembering her Palestinian roots while mourning her father's death. In this process, she describes how she came to terms with the pain and humiliation of her Palestinian childhood and how she began to heal through remembering and writing Tasting the Sky. Prolific U.S. author, Elsa Marston explores the Arab world as depicted in children's books and shares her quest to write books in which Arab Americans and those of Palestinian heritage can see themselves represented. In The Arab world in children's books: Finding Palestine, Marsten reviews books with themes of reconciliation, ones in which conflicting peoples find a common ground and friendship, as well as books that show shattered lives, devastation and hopelessness inflicted by war. In Marston's Santa Claus in Baghdad, a book of short stories portraying teenagers from various Arab societies, she hopes that readers will see her protagonists within their particular cultural contexts as young people who have the same concerns as young people everywhere. The last article in this trilogy, A chat with Ibtisam Barakat by Elsa Marston with Ibtisam Barakat presents an enlightening conversation between these two fellow authors. In particular, this piece provides background information on Barakat's resilience and ability to find inner peace and healing through the telling of what she refers to as "heart" stories.

In the second trio of articles, themes of multifaceted and interdependent relationships between self and others are considered. Evocative drawings and stories created by children are featured in Children of Palestine tell their stories based on the "First Book" project sponsored by the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Palestine. Like Ibtisam Barakat, a professional author who found writing a way to "own a piece of her childhood," the stories presented in this article serve as a way for children to remember and maintain their hopes and dreams. In Face to face: Self and others in Israeli children's literature, Israeli author Celina Maschiach describes a peace initiative in which texts are written both in Hebrew and Arabic. A convincing case is made that both inner peace and outer peace is possible when we see the "other" as residing within ourselves. Ahmed K. Al-Rawi's article, Charles Perrault's "Le Petit Poucet" and its possible Arabic influences presents the possibility that "Le Petit Poucet" or "Little Thumbling" was influenced by an Arab folktale popular among the Bedouins or the oral tradition in Spain, arguing persuasively that it has roots in several different cultures.

The idea of seeing ourselves in others without denying differences, acknowledging our interdependence with each other as crucial to our survival, is brought to the forefront in Fantasy as philosophy in children's literature: The multicultural landscape of The Clockwork Forest by Kate McInally. McInally's powerful analysis of this text makes the compelling argument that fantasy can help us to negotiate futures in a way that realism cannot. For those of us who were not privileged to attend the biennial Dorothy Briley...