My name is Yakir Shlomo and I live in Jerusalem, Israel. If you spin a globe, it won't be easy to find the country where I live. Israel is barely the size of your thumbnail on most world maps. But I feel like I live in the center of the universe. Everyone's home is unique and my city and country are special to me. I know my home is a teeny, tiny dot if you think about the earth and the whole gigantic solar system. But it really can't be that small, since we have to make room for the 3.5 million people from all over the world who come to visit Israel during just one year.I am almost eight years old and I can understand why Israel has so many visitors. My country is an interesting place--and especially fun for children. I am glad my mother decided to help me write this book about Israel. My friends and I can't wait to tell you why we think it is so interesting to be Israeli. We hope that after you read this book, you might decide you'd like to come here and see for yourself.

Israeli Jews and Palestinians appear side by side for the first time in this remarkable book to share powerful feelings and reflections on growing up in one of the world's longest and most dangerous conflicts. Here, thirty-six men and women, boys and girls, tell of their coming-of-age in a land of turmoil. From kibbutzim in Israel and the occupied territories to Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israeli Jews and Palestinians tell of tragedy and transcendence as they face their deepest fears and dream of a peaceful future. Listen to them as they recount stories of their brief and often violent youth. No matter what their ethnic identity, how much and how long they have suffered, these courageous autobiographers most often reveal a deep longing for peace. Perhaps their hopes and fears are best illustrated by a parable retold by eighteen-year-old Redrose (a pseudonym): "Two frogs got trapped in a jar of cream. They couldn't jump out of the liquid and they couldn't climb because the sides of the jar were slippery. One frog said, 'By dawn I'll be dead,' and went to sleep. The second frog swam all night long and in the morning found herself floating on a pat of butter."

This acclaimed series gives readers the,opportunity to learn about other young people,whose lives are very different to their own. Looks,at the cultural diversities, history, geographyand key issues. Full colour photography,accompanies lively and compelling text. Ages 8-11.

In The Children of Israel, Danna Nolan Fewell explores how imaginative readings of selected scriptural texts might raise adult consciousness and responsibility toward children. Through stories, quotes, vignettes, and notes, Fewell provides different kinds of reading experiences, with different levels of coherence and disjunction, depending on how much the reader decides to delve into the critical apparatus or the framing dialogues. This work is designed to unsettle, to plant suggestions and questions, and to create space for reflection and conversation. It is an experiment to see if a postmodern reading of the Bible can provide a credible ethical vision that can inspire us to do a better job of caring for our children. "The ways in which Fewell addresses the theme is inspiring. The text is imaginatively crafted and skillfully written." --Leslie J. Francis, from The Expository Times, volume 116, Number 8, May 2005

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it, taking what had been a national religion and turning it into an idea. Whenever a Jew studied—wherever he was—he would be in the holy city, and his faith preserved. But in our own time, Zionists have turned the book back into a temple, and unlike an idea, a temple can be destroyed. With exuberance, humor, and real scholarship, Rich Cohen's Israel is Real offers "a serious attempt by a gifted storyteller to enliven and elucidate Jewish religious, cultural, and political history . . . A powerful narrative" (Los Angeles Times).