While admitting that she hadn’t read the book, Sheila Ward, a Toronto District School Board trustee told the Jewish Tribune that she will “move heaven and earth to have The Shepherd’s Granddaughter taken off school library shelves.” Goodness! What would she move if she actually had read the book?

A couple of months ago I got a phone call letting me know that an event at which I was planning to be a bookseller had been canceled. I had ordered around $3,000 worth of books from various publishers and I scrambled to cancel those orders because I would be responsible for shipping all those books back, at my cost. A few boxes of books still ended up arriving and I carefully went through the books to see which ones I would keep to sell through our web site. One which caught my attention was The Shepherd’s Granddaughter, by Anne Laurel Carter. It is the story of a young Palestinian girl, who wants to become a shepherd. Her family had been shepherds for generations, but the shepherd’s crook had been passed from father to son, or grandfather to grandson, but never to a girl.

I was captivated the moment I started reading and could not put the book down. Beyond being totally enthralled with this plucky and outspoken girl taking on a role that is traditionally male, and her wonderful grandfather standing up against the rest of the family to pass the tradition on to her, the story also felt very familiar from stories in my childhood.

Somehow I felt that Anne Laurel Carter had captured a common thread from many of the stories I had read as a child, in this tale of a Palestinian girl and her family. Told through the eyes of the child, we see a family living a somewhat serene life, doing what they’ve done for generations. But, something bad is happening nearby, in other villages, to other families, and some are saying that something should be done to stop bad things from coming closer. Someone says “We should fight!” A wiser sage says “No. Violence is not the answer.” Then bad things start to happen right there, terrible things, and again someone says “We should fight!” And a wiser sage says “No. We have always survived these things and we will survive again.”

Such is the case in The Shepherd’s Granddaughter. Amina’s family has lived in this spot for generations. But Israeli settlers are expanding their settlements, and new roads are being built through villages (roads which Palestinians are not allowed to use), and one road is heading straight for the spot where Amina’s sheep graze. Some in her family want to fight the Israelis, others swear that violence is never the answer. While the reader is warmed by the wonderful relationship between Amina and her grandfather, and enjoys learning the craft of shepherding along with Amina, the reader also feels the dread of the road coming ever closer, and the daily humiliation of living under occupation.

The events that happen to Amina and her family read like a compilation of some of the worst and most tragic experiences Palestinians have, in fact, faced, in the last decades. Homes have been demolished, orchards destroyed, young men arrested and held in jail without charges, crops have been left to decay because farmers couldn’t move them through checkpoints in time to reach markets, family members faced death because the quickest route to a doctor was over a road on which Palestinians are prohibited from traveling… And at the end of it all, when tragedy has struck over and over again in this novel told through the eyes of Amina, what does young Amina decide to do about it? She decides to go to school, learn English, so that she can become a lawyer and fight for the rights of her people.

The complaint, from B’nai Brith and Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is that this is a one-sided book, propaganda, and could incite violence against Jews, and, that for 7th and 8th graders in Canada, it may be “the first and only time” they are exposed to information about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

When I wrote my first review of this book on our Reach And Teach web site, I included books that I felt should be used as companions to The Shepherd’s Granddaughter. One of those was another award-winning book, Three Wishes, by Deborah Ellis. In that book, we hear the voices of Israeli and Palestinian children, whom Ellis interviewed, talking about their lives and the impact the conflict has on them. Weaved throughout the interviews, Ellis provides historical context, so that the young readers can understand how the current situation evolved.

While an organization I help lead (Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice) was planning an event for the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, Three Wishes was an inspiration to gather the voices of children in Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and Canada, and share those voices with those who gathered, so that they could hear how children are coping with violence, and why we as adults should work to bring all of these wars to an end. In the days leading up to the event, we received a note from an Israeli child whose friend’s house had just been struck by a rocket, killing a Thai worker. A Palestinian child wrote that she went to bed that night hoping that “there would be no booms tonight.”

Can we not see the tragedy for both of these children, without being called biased? Can we not empathize with how they feel, regardless of whether we agree with their interpretation of what actually happened and why?

While I was not shocked to read that there was opposition to The Shepherd’s Granddaughter, I have to admit that I was astounded that these same people had attacked Three Wishes with similar charges. When I read that, I grabbed my copy of Three Wishes and read it again. Was it painful to read? Yes. Were children on both sides of the divide traumatized by violence? Yes. Was historical context provided that was accurate and showed wrongs by all sides in the conflict? Yes. Was the book an anti-Israel screed? No. Unless you agree with those who demanded it be banned from libraries.

What also shocked me was the concept that The Shepherd’s Granddaughter would be “the first and only time” young Canadians would be introduced to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. That is a terrible, and I would imagine false, indictment of Canadian schools, television, newspapers, and parents.

From my perspective, those calling for the removal of this book from Canadian libraries and warning teachers not to allow children to read it, have no credibility if they also called for the censorship of Three Wishes. They also lack credibility when they make the charge that a novel, told in the first person, is one-sided. And of course Sheila Ward has absolutely no credibility in saying she will “move heaven and earth” to remove a book from libraries and schools that she hasn’t even read.

So, what’s my point in writing about this?

I think people should read the book. I think the Ontario Library Association made a good decision when they included this book among ten books that children might consider reading this year. I think that any time organizations call for censorship of a book, other people and organizations have to stand up and say “wait a minute!” And finally, the story does tell me that I need to be on the lookout for another novel… the story of a Jewish/Israeli child, and the impact the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has on him or her.

One of the most painful memories I have of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is reading about two Israeli boys, who had ditched school one day, and were murdered in a cave, their blood smeared on the wall… with Palestinians saying that their murder was revenge for crimes committed against them. Around the same time, who could forget the image of a Palestinian father, crouched on the ground, desperately trying to protect his son from Israeli soldiers’ gunfire, and moments later cradling his dead son in his arms, blood pouring from the boy’s wounds.

Do the images of blood on the cave’s walls and the father’s arms make me angry? Yes. Are they one-sided? Each one? Yes.

Together, do they make me want to move heaven and earth to end the violence?

Yes.

That’s the point.

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