The Lemon Tree (Young Readers' Edition)

Through broad sweeps of narrative going back and forward in time, Tolan’s sensitively told, eminently fair-minded narrative closes with a return to that lemon tree and its promise of reconciliation. Humane and literate–and rather daring in suggesting that the future of the Middle East need not be violent. – starred * Kirkus Reviews *Moving, well-crafted … readers will experience one of the world’s most stubborn conflicts firsthand. – starred * Publishers Weekly *[Tolan] sensitively describes the tough friendship between Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, the daughter of Romanian Jewish immigrants who settled in Ramla, and Palestinian Bashir Khairi, who in 1967 knocked on her door to look at the house his family lost when it was forced to flee in 1948 … Tolan uses the beloved backyard lemon tree to drive home the shared humanity of the successive inhabitants of one home. * LA Review of Books *A balanced presentation of the issues?… . puts a very human face on a centuries-old conundrum. * School Library Connection *

Sandy Tolan is the author of Me & Hank and Children of the Stone. As cofounder of Homelands Productions, Tolan has reported from more than forty countries for NPR, and for dozens of magazines and other news outlets. His work has won numerous awards, and he was a 1993 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an I. F. Stone Fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.