In the Jerusalem Forest

by Devora Busheri, Noa Kelner (Illustrator)

Overview

A child and her mother take a walk in the forest near Jerusalem, gazing at their reflections in a rippling pond and appreciating their time together.

Inspired by the poem “The Pond” by Hayim Nahman Bialik.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541534735
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 0.13(d)
Age Range:	7 - 8 Years

About the Author

Devora Busheri is a children's book writer, editor, and translator. She has authored and edited many books for various publication houses in Israel. Her previous include The Abba Tree and In the Jerusalem Forest. Devora lives in Jerusalem with her husband and their four children.

Noa Kelner graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design. She works with book publishers, newspapers, and magazines, and loves to give stories color and form. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the annual "Outline – Illustration and Words" festival in Jerusalem and also teaches illustration. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband and two children.

Editorial Reviews

"[A] good introduction to a nature walk, and could lead to some interesting explorations of the properties of water and reflection."—Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 2019-07-14
Readers will be happily confused by this picture book.

Almost every page of the story—based on a piece by Israeli national poet Hayim Nahman Bialik—is gently disorienting. The narrator is a young girl walking through the woods with her mother, and as they look at the reflections in the water, she says, "The forest is upside-down," and "There in the water: the sky!" Kelner takes this as a challenge. In her paintings, the sky is often the same color as the water or the ground, and the characters' clothing matches the nature around them. The most challenging section is when the girl says, "Ima and I see our reflections in the pond. We look the same, like two drops of rain." ("Ima" is the Hebrew word for "Mom.") This isn't quite true. The mother is tall, freckled, and redheaded. The daughter is more compact, and her skin is the pale brown of coffee ice cream. But the paintings include small details that mirror each other so that the characters really do start to look alike. Busheri adds off rhymes to the text at unexpected moments ("same" and "rain," "come" and "sun"), which is both lovely and a bit startling. The imagery, both in the words and the pictures, is so beautiful that readers may be heartbroken when a ripple in the water takes the reflections away.

People will be stunned by this book even if they're too astonished to explain why. (Picture book. 4-9)

Kirkus Reviews