Chicken Pox

Looks like we’ll be wrapping up Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye today since Olivia has the chicken pox. Nothing like an illness to let you get in lots of good reading time. This is a great chapter book for kids ten to twelve, and I’m glad to be reading it with my girl so that we can talk about some grownup issues as they come along. The book deals with the tension between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, but Nye handles it through personal relationships to make it understandable and meaningful to a child living here on the other side of the world. We’ve talked about racism and war and terrorism as we’ve read the book. It also presents a young teen in her first relationship with a boy. It is gentle and respectful and has been a nice model for how Oliv might deal with those new feelings when she first encounters them in her life. I sure used books to help me figure things out as I was growing. Reading about girls just a little older than I was was a way for me to peek ahead at what was coming. Books kind of filled the role of an older sibling for me. As long as Olivia is open to my suggestions, I can lay a path of books for her that might ease her transition from child to adolescent. And she'll no doubt find many on her own that will help her as well.