“Where the Streets Had a Name” by Randa Abdel-Fattah

The big plus for this middle-school fiction novel is that it covers a subject virtually untouched in YA lit … Palestinian teens. To my knowledge, the only other book that covers this topic is Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Habibi.” Being more contemporary (the story is set in 2004) we get a very detailed look at the challenges of living in a troubled part of the world. The story is that of Hayaat, a thirteen year-old girl living in Bethlehem. In an attempt to ease the unhappiness of her sick grandmother, Hayaat tries to make the six mile journey from Bethlehem to Jerusalem with a daredevil best friend. The obstacles that lay in the path of these two young children are significant, and at times, insurmountable. While I knew of the Israeli occupation, I had little sense of the day-to-day struggles of those who live there. The book was a marvelous insight into a tremendously sad situation. The characters are real and much like Hosseini’s “Kite Runner” I was struck by how very normal teens can be, even in extraordinary circumstances. The story is also fairly upbeat and wholesome, given the darker undertones, and this leads to my chief complaint – an inconsistency in the writing. The characters are supposed to be 13, but often come off as younger. Timelines are frequently skewed, with two weeks turning into a month and an accident that supposedly happened when Hayaat was “small” apparently happened after she was nine (if the sequence of events holds true). These are the kinds of things an editor should have caught, and a big slap on the hands to Scholastic for not cleaning them up before publication. That being said, the descriptions in the story are detailed and occasionally rich, without there being much literary poetry brought to the book. If not for the realistic, contemporary setting, one could easily mistake this for any teen lit “take a journey” novel. It is the kind of book that could end up being used as a class novel. It has many of the elements that make it a good choice: appeal to both boys and girls, the aforementioned “journey” (both physical and psychological), and connection to the Geography curriculum in terms of world conflict and displaced peoples. I do think any young person reading the book would need teacher assistance for context. I am a news-hound, but it still had me running for an atlas and Wikipedia. Arabic phrases are sprinkled throughout and are defined in a detailed glossary. While this is helps, clever ways of making meaning clear in text tends to be more popular. That way, readers don’t have to stop the flow of the story to look things up. I enjoyed the book and felt it flowed well. Hopefully, this story will give students the kind of insight it gave me.