I have to admit that this wasn’t a book I intended to review. Like many other picture books I read, I felt I wasn’t the intended audience, so let others review, read, and enjoy it. I saw it very soon after it came out, and thought it was quite good but something was incomplete for me. But, I thought, I wasn’t the audience, and the topic is so challenging.

It’s been nagging at me, though, and as I discussed the book with my family, it occurred to me that this may be one of those rare occasions when I feel able to add something to a conversation with a mixed review. And I heard the voice of Nanty Solo (remember that book?) in my head, “But what on earth are you frightened of?” It startled me, because it’s the question I wanted to ask the creative team.

Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine, by Hannah Moushabeck with art by Reem Madooh, is a deeply personal narrative drawing on family stories from the complex, toothy, prickly history of the Middle East, of Palestine and of Israel. The author herself is Palestinian-American.

The tenderness of a father sharing his stories and memories with his children is central to the book. He talks of adventures and misadventures, sights and tastes and scents– the stories are alive with sensory detail, and that’s the real strength of the book, evoking the joy one feels listening to a storyteller right before you. The chief character in the picture book is the child the father was, told by the father now, but understood through his stories by his children– and, now, recorded in this book by one daughter years later… It’s a complex interleafing of memory and story, and the received feeling is nostalgic. The Welsh have a word that springs to mind, hiraeth. The word isn’t easy to explain to any clear degree but refers to a sense of homesickness with a deep awareness that what’s been lost can never be retrieved. It’s a nostalgia, but sharper, felt as a pain.

The book doesn’t sit with this pain, however, any more than it sits with either the child character or the father with his children; you never get too close. As a reader, I noticed a delicacy, a carefulness, permeating the book. We know there is sadness, but the book doesn’t look at it. We know there is pain and loss, but the book doesn’t address grief. We come so close, but always skirt the edges of the sharper feelings. We go up to hiraeth, nostalgia, an acknowledgement of the sadness that the children will never experience what the father remembers, but then we back away.

The Jewish reader in me knows more, of course. Jews aren’t specifically addressed in the book; though I do believe the illustrator carefully made sure we were represented in the remembered scenes, the written text is too delicately careful to go there. It’s not exactly being stamped out, but just… carefully off the scene. It’s not telling a Jewish story, so we don’t have to be there, so we aren’t, and it’s so much easier that way– because then we don’t have to actually look at the conflict.

And that’s where the Nanty Solo in my head started in: “But what on earth are you frightened of?”

The problem in telling a story of Palestine or of Israel for any audience is that the two groups are both angry at each other and both convinced they are right, and were right about that other thing, too– and I’m fully aware that whoever is reading this is sure to be thinking, “Enough with equating this! [Side X] is right!” I understand, believe me. I’m Jewish, and I’m pretty glad there’s a state of Israel, which does tend to put me on one “side,” though I rather kick and scream about that because I’m a stubborn creature who doesn’t like “sides.” But this gives me a way to acknowledge that, yes, we are all angry– because that’s kind of the point.

The problem in telling stories of Palestine or of Israel to any audience is the anger– and the problem in telling those stories to kids, say, in picture books, is that we don’t like to talk about the anger to the kids. And I’m looking at Homeland and I don’t see the heat of anger, the pain of it, the sharp keenness of it. Do none of them feel anger (I can’t believe that), or is it simply unacknowledged? If, by some miracle, these people feel no anger, what about pain? Grief? Resentment, even for a moment? I have to wonder, because the deliberate distancing from the characters and the interleafing of time and space leaves too much room. What are we not talking about?

“But what on earth are you frightened of?“

We can’t be afraid of the kids, are we? Kids know anger! Having worked in a school, briefly, and having looked on the internet for more than a few minutes, I’m aware that the cause of concern in children’s literature is less likely to be children than adults. I feel that, by the way; I hate adults, too, and, being honest, parents are the worst. I should know. I am one.

The most likely scenario, I think, is that Homeland is deliberately cautious because the author (and, presumably, editorial team) really didn’t want to get into hot water on a delicate subject. I can see that. It’s a more than fair concern. I’ve also got bad news: it’s simply impossible to avoid getting some kind of huffy or angry or otherwise unkind response to a book dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in any way. I’ve been astonished by it before, and no matter how careful Homeland is, I think it’s unavoidable. So, why not be honest? Kids can tell when you’re not telling them something, and adults fill in the gaps if you leave them.

But I wonder. What would happen if we didn’t leave those gaps? What would happen if a Palestinian-American sat down with their picture book about broken houses and a key with no door and said, “I was sad. I was angry. I lost something precious, and I feel it still.” What if, then, a Jewish child looked up and said, “I recognize that story– on the same land, we had homes and lost them. We were sad, and scared, and sat by the rivers of Babylon, and wept. We still say those words in our prayers.”

It is just, just possible that the two would be able to look into each others’ eyes and say, “I see myself in you.”

This is not a plea to Hannah Moushabeck, who wrote a really strong debut picture book here. This is more of a plea to publishers: “But what on earth are you frightened of?” Tell me your stories, so I can listen, and hear, and tell you mine in my own turn.