Ibtisam emphasizes that conflicts are more likely to be resolved with creativity, kindness, and inclusion rather than with force, violence, and exclusion.

Her work focuses on healing social injustices and the hurts of wars, especially those involving young people. This book, appropriate for readers young and old, holds literature’s great power: the power to humanize the ‘other,’ and to therefore change the way we understand our world.” -Sandy Tolan, author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle EastĪ bilingual speaker of Arabic and English, Ibtisam Barakat grew up in Ramallah, West Bank, and now lives in the United States. “In vivid, beautiful prose, Ibtisam Barakat transports readers into a place few Westerners have ever seen-the interior life of a young girl and her family in the occupied West Bank. Winner of the Arab American National Museum Book Award for Children's/YA Literature Transcending the particulars of politics, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood is an illuminating and timely book that provides a telling glimpse into a part of the Middle East that has become an increasingly important part of the puzzle of world peace. This is the beginning of her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home.

With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family the harshness of life in the Middle East as a Palestinian refugee her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. Just forget!'īut I do not want to do what Mother says. 'When a war ends it does not go away,' my mother says.'It hides inside us.

Tasting the Sky by Ibtisam Barakat