Making books that speak to the world

A note from the publisher

Some years ago, while a guest at Chile’s largest book fair, I came across a beautiful picture book about two boys, one Palestinian and the other Jewish, who share a birthday, and have each received two gifts: a soccer ball and a traditional scarf. The Palestinian boy wears a kaffiyeh, the Jewish boy a tallit. They spend time playing soccer in the park; eventually, they begin to play together, using their scarves to mark two goals. 

Hours go by. It gets dark and they need to get home. By mistake, each takes with him the wrong item: the Palestinian boy takes the tallit, the Jewish boy takes the keffiyeh. When their families realize it, they become angry, and tell the boys to return the item first thing in the morning. That night, each boy has a nightmare about what he has heard from his parents and seen on the news. Next day, the boys return to the park with the tallit, the keffiyeh, and their soccer balls. Instead of just exchanging the items, they start doing what they love: playing soccer.

It isn’t surprising that the book was originally published in Chile—it not only has the largest Palestinian diaspora outside of the Arab world, but also a small thriving Jewish community. That year in Santiago, I met the book’s author, Juan Pablo Iglesias, and proposed to him and Alex Peris, the illustrator, that Restless Books do a trilingual version of the story: translated into English, Hebrew, and Arabic. I thought the book, in the three languages, might reach different readers. It was a unique idea; trilingual children’s books are uncommon, but I never thought the road to publication would have so many obstacles.

Funding was one. For an independent nonprofit publisher like Restless Books, the passion we have for the works we choose to bring to an English-speaking audience needs to be matched by financial support from donors—both private and in the form of government and foundation-based grants. But that was not the most challenging obstacle. It took me years to persuade an Arabic translator to collaborate. I invited the best talents and received swift rejections. As innocent—perhaps the right word is quixotic—as the project may have appeared to be, some translators seemed to feel that collaborating on a book presented in both languages would be politically fraught. 

When we finally found the right team (Randa Sayegh translated into the Arabic, Eliezer Nowodworski and Frieda Press-Danieli into the Hebrew), I was thrilled. In English, we titled the hardcover book Daniel and Ismail, the names of the two boys. It was released in 2019. It got a bunch of wonderful reviews but sales were modest. Personally, I was proud of the endeavor, but I couldn’t ignore the feeling that it had failed to find an audience.

Of course, there has been untold suffering in the Middle East between then and now. But the brutal war that began on October 7th—in which some 240 Israelis were taken hostage, and at least 1,200 Israelis and 13,300 Palestinians have been killed—is unparalleled in modern times. The vast majority of casualties are civilians; many of them, especially in Gaza, are children. 

In early November, Miriam Udel, a scholar at Emory University whose research focuses on children’s literature, wrote an opinion essay in The New York Times in which she talks of the ways she presents the war to her child. She highlighted Daniel and Ismail as an example of the power of children’s literature to foster “more than just basic awareness of the similarities and differences in our shared humanity: It conjures a realm where we can imagine—together—something better than what is.” In other words, she wrote, the book subtly acknowledges “that a new generation will have to figure out how to make peace and that it is possible for children to lead us.”

If there is a better, more hopeful way to view children’s literature, I don’t know what it is. We are grateful to Miriam Udel for sharing her beautiful list and highlighting Daniel and Ismail for readers who may otherwise have never found it. The reaction has been astounding. We have sold out of every copy of the book we have. There is a growing list of back orders, so much so that we have decided to bring out a new paperback edition. And publishers in different parts of the globe are interested in printing it in Arabic, Hebrew, and their own language.  

While a book cannot begin to solve the ongoing and enormous suffering in the Middle East, it can offer something that feels much too scant these days: hope. The written word—the oldest, most enduring form of communication—is magical: it can demean and even annihilate, but it’s better suited to make strangers into friends.

In this season of giving, we hope you will consider donating to Restless Books. We are eager to bring many more books like Daniel and Ismail into the world. We need you to help us reach as many readers as possible—readers like you.

Muchas gracias,

Ilan