Publishers Weekly
11/28/2016
Laskin (Homer the Little Stray Cat) creates a resonant contemporary version of Romeo and Juliet, transporting Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers to modern-day Gaza. Ronit, a Jewish Israeli teen, meets Jamil, a Muslim Palestinian, through their fathers, a pharmacist and doctor. Though both families work together to help the needy in Palestine, they don’t fully trust the other and are particularly wary of their teenage children talking to each other, much less falling in love. Writing in clipped, understated verse, Laskin borrows lines from the original play as she sensitively describes two lovers weaving their way through social, political, and familial hurdles designed to keep them apart (“I hate the parting/ the sorrow of it/ the fear/ tomorrow will never come”). Laskin takes pains to address the similarities between the Palestinian and Israeli households—two back-to-back poems titled “Dinner Chatter” reveal parallel menus (“Ommi’s good food:/ hummus, falafel, baba ghanoush.... Imah’s good food:/ hummus, falafel, baba ghanoush”) and attitudes—starkly juxtaposing them against mutual prejudices. A lyrical message of peace and love radiates from this relevant and hopeful reimagining. Ages 13–up. Agent: Myrsini Stephanides, Carol Mann Agency. (Feb.)
Booklist
[T]he modern verse-flecked with Arabic, Hebrew, and iconic excerpts from the play itself-will ease romance-hungry teens into both Shakespeare’s original and the challenging context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A welcome nod to hope in the face of the impossible.
Horn Book Magazine
Supplementary information offers context, including language translations, additional story details, and references to other works. The small, handheld trim size reinforces the story’s intimate feel.
Jacqueline Woodson
Ronit & Jamil is as beautiful as it is timely. This modern-day Romeo and Juliet is a story that is at once supremely specific and stunningly universal. The poems stand on their own while holding together a narrative that you want to live inside of long after the final page.
School Library Journal
01/01/2017
Gr 7 Up—Poet Laskin's short, lyrical novel in verse is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in present-day Jerusalem. Ronit is an Israeli girl whose father, Chaim, is a pharmacist, and Jamil is a Palestinian boy whose father, Mohammed, is a physician. Chaim supplies prescription medications to Mohammed's patients. The two teens first meet at the clinic where both their fathers work, and, as in Shakespeare's original, the young lovers fall for each other after meeting only briefly. Through secret texts and clandestine meetings, they desperately try to be with each other while facing opposition from their parents and the very real physical barrier between Israel and the West Bank. The story departs from the original, though, with the implication that Ronit and Jamil will escape the conflict and find a way to be together—an underlying message of hope for the larger Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Laskin frequently quotes Shakespeare's play as well as Arab poets, including Rumi and Mahmoud Darwish, and makes skillful use of Middle Eastern poetic forms, such as the ghazal. It may occasionally be difficult for readers to tell which character is speaking, but the accessible verse and universal questions about crossing cultural lines make for a quick and powerful read. VERDICT An obvious choice to pair with Romeo and Juliet in a literature class, this can also open discussion about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and about bridging cultural boundaries.—Kathleen E. Gruver, Burlington County Library, Westampton, NJ
APRIL 2017 - AudioFile
This contemporary take on ROMEO AND JULIET moves the action to Israel and Palestine and tells the story of the star-crossed lovers in verse. The sparse yet lyrical text proves a significant challenge for all of the narrators, especially Nira Amiel and Assaf Cohen, who tackle the roles of the young lovers. The voices of the poems are extremely similar, and Amiel and Cohen fail to enliven them with additional personality. The narrators’ use of accents creates a strong sense of place, but extremely regular pacing deflates any potential drama. Laskin quotes liberally from Shakespeare’s text and from Middle Eastern poets, but without vocal inflection to clearly delineate quotations, the text sounds cluttered and occasionally nonsensical. E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2016-11-06
A timeless tale of star-crossed love set amid modern-day conflict.Laskin's novel in verse takes forbidden teen love à la Romeo and Juliet and sets it in present-day Israel. She portrays the Montagues and Capulets as Jews and Arabs, casting Ronit as the daring daughter of an Israeli pharmacist who falls for Jamil, the alluring son of a Palestinian doctor. What gives this contemporary reprise its ironic edge is that while the protagonists' fathers work together and routinely set aside political differences in the service of healing the sick, their ingrained cultural prejudices prevent them from accepting that their beloved children have fallen for each other. Laskin is at pains to show how similar the teens are: they've been raised on the same foods—"hummus, falafel, baba ghanoush"—and both wish to buck convention, Ronit to duck her mandatory army service, Jamil to avoid following in his father's footsteps to a career in medicine. Throughout, Laskin's spare first-person poems and prefatory and end notes help educate young readers as to the gravity of the political stakes in this war-torn region where, while Ronit texts that "there is no separation barrier" between them, they both lament that their physical reality proves quite the opposite: "This wall / is so high; / 25 feet of concrete / 435 miles long." At once romantic and revealing, an important window into contemporary conditions in the Middle East. (Verse fiction. 14-18)
