In their March/April 2020 Horn Book article “We Need Diverse Jewish and Muslim Books: A Conversation,” Heidi Rabinowitz and Sadaf Siddique discussed the state of Jewish and Muslim books and the work being done to share them. They found a number of parallels in their approaches to showcasing Jewish and...
We Are All We Have by Marina Budhos High School Lamb/Random 256 pp. g10/22 978-0-593-12020-0 $17.99Library ed. 978-0-593-12021-7 $20.99e-book ed. 978-0-593-12022-4 $10.99 When an overnight ICE raid in 2019 Brooklyn leads to her mother’s arrest, seventeen-year-old Rania and her eight-year-old brother, Kamal, are left behind....
Hollow Fires by Samira AhmedHigh School Little, Brown 400 pp. g5/22 978-0-316-28264-2 $18.99e-book ed. 978-0-316-28284-0 $9.99In a fast-paced thriller with elements of the supernatural, Ahmed (Internment, rev. 3/19) continues to explore issues of racism and Islamophobia. Chicago high-school senior and budding journalist Safiya Mirza attends exclusive DuSable Prep. When...
Unsettled by Reem Faruqi Middle School Harper/HarperCollins 352 pp. g 5/21 978-0-06-304470-8 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-0-06-304472-2 $8.99 Faruqi’s evocative immigrant story in verse follows a young girl from the “land of the pure” to the “land of the free.” Thirteen-year-old Nurah Haqq and her family move from Karachi, Pakistan, to...
Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo Middle School, High School Make Me a World/Random 224 pp. g 3/21 978-0-593-17705-1 $17.99 Library ed. 978-0-593-17706-8 $20.99 e-book ed. 978-0-593-17707-5 $10.99 Elhillo’s strikingly original novel in searingly honest, staccato verse, nearly all in lowercase, showcases the difficult realities of working-class immigrant...
A Thousand Questions by Saadia Faruqi Intermediate Quill Tree/HarperCollins 320 pp. g 10/20 978-0-06-294320-0 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-0-06-294322-4 $8.99 Issues of home and belonging form the cornerstones of Faruqi’s (author of the Yasmin early chapter books) first solo middle-grade novel. Mimi and her mother (her father left the family when...
Desert Girl, Monsoon Boy by Tara Dairman; illus. by Archana Sreenivasan Preschool, Primary Putnam 32 pp. g 5/20 978-0-525-51806-8 $17.99 e-book ed. 978-0-525-51807-5 $10.99 In this beautifully rendered study of contrasts and commonalities, Dairman imagines a girl and boy from two different biomes in India. Split pages portray the girl...
In recent years, we have seen a welcome increase in books that center diversity in race, class, ability, sexuality, and more. As members of religious minority groups (Sadaf is Muslim, Heidi is Jewish) — and at a time when both Islamophobia and antisemitism are on the rise (deeply troubling and...