Tasting the Sky

April 2, 2007
This rare and timely memoir tracks Barakat's amazing story of survival, largely through her belief in the power of words to heal: "Stories may inspire us to join hearts and minds so that, with our collective wisdom, a solution for this conflict—and any other—is possible." As this haunting book opens, Israeli soldiers haul Ibtisam, then a teenager, off a bus in the West Bank in 1981 and detain her without explanation. Ibtisam secretly risks these trips out of her village in order to visit a post office box, where she receives letters from international pen pals—her only link to a saner, safer world. While detained, she flashes back to details of the Six-Day War, in poetic yet searing prose. Ibtisam was little more than three years old when her family fled Ramallah in 1967 to a refugee camp in Jordan, and her memory of it, in a chapter called "Shoelaces," brims with tension and emotion. The narrator's understated tone lacks self-pity and thus allows readers to witness her fear and hope. She poignantly relates the Palestinian experience to that of street dogs: "I knew that they were dying and that they had come to our door only because, like us, they were seeking refuge. But instead of understanding, we shot at them, the way the warplanes shot at us." Ibtisam's reverence for language informs nearly everything she does, and it keeps her alive, whether corresponding with her pen pals or crafting this memoir: "a thread/ of a story/ stitches together/ a wound." Ages 12-up.

Starred review from May 1, 2007
Gr 7 Up-This moving memoir of a Palestinian womans childhood experiences during the Six-Day War and its aftermath is presented in beautifully crafted vignettes. Barakat, now living and working in the United States, frames the story of her life between 1967 and 1970 with a pair of letters from herself as a high school student in 1981. Detained by soldiers during an ordinary bus trip, she was prompted to try to recall her shattered childhood and share her experiences with others around the world. She begins with a description of her three-year-old self, temporarily separated from her family in their first frantic flight from their Ramallah home as the war began. The authors love for the countryside and her culture shines through her bittersweet recollections. Careful choice of episodes and details brings to life a Palestinian world that may be unfamiliar to American readers, but which they will come to know and appreciate. Readers will be charmed by the writer-to-be as she falls in love with chalk, the Arabic alphabet, and the first-grade teacher who recognizes her abilities."Kathleen Isaacs, Towson University, MD"

Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2007
In a spare, eloquent memoir, Barakat recalls life under military occupation. In 1981 the author, then in high school, boarded a bus bound for Ramallah. The bus was detained by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint on the West Bank, and she was taken to a detention center before being released. The episode triggers sometimes heart-wrenching memories of herself as a young child, at the start of the 1967 Six Days' War, as Israeli soldiers conducted raids, their planes bombed her home, and she fled with her family across the border to Jordan. She also recalls living under occupation and the thrill of being able to attend the United Nations school for refugees. The political upheaval is always in the background, but for young Barakat, much of the drama was in incidents that took place in everyday life.What makes the memoir so compelling is the immediacy of the child's viewpoint, which depicts both conflict and daily life without exploitation or sentimentality. An annotated bibliography will help readers fill in the facts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)