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About Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine

A father and his daughters may not be able to return home . . . but they can celebrate stories of their homeland!

As bedtime approaches, three young girls eagerly await the return of their father who tells them stories of a faraway homeland--Palestine. Through their father's memories, the Old City of Jerusalem comes to life: the sounds of juice vendors beating rhythms with brass cups, the smell of argileh drifting through windows, and the sight of doves flapping their wings toward home. These daughters of the diaspora feel love for a place they have never been, a home they cannot visit. But, as their father's story comes to an end, they know that through his memories, they will always return.

A Palestinian family celebrates the stories of their homeland in this moving autobiographical picture book debut by Hannah Moushabeck. With heartfelt illustrations by Reem Madooh, this story is a love letter to home, to family, and to the persisting hope of people that transcends borders.

About These Olive Trees

The story of a Palestinian family's ties to the land, and how one young girl finds a way to care for her home, even as she says goodbye.

It's 1967 in Nablus, Palestine.

Oraib loves the olive trees that grow outside the refugee camp where she lives. Each harvest, she and her mama pick the small fruits and she eagerly stomp stomp stomps on them to release their golden oil. Olives have always tied her family to the land, as Oraib learns from the stories Mama tells of a home before war.

But war has come to their door once more, forcing them to flee. Even as her family is uprooted, Oraib makes a solemn promise to her beloved olive trees. She will see to it that their legacy lives on for generations to come.

Debut author-illustrator Aya Ghanameh boldly paints a tale of bitterness, hope, and the power of believing in a free and thriving future.

Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author, editor, and book marketer who was raised in a family of publishers and booksellers in Western Massachusetts and England. Born in Brooklyn into Interlink Publishing, a family-run independent publishing house, she learned the power of literature at a young age. She is the author of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (Chronicle Books, March 2023). She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts on the homelands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Nations.

Aya Ghanameh is a Palestinian illustrator, writer, and designer from Amman, Jordan currently based in New York City. Her work moves away from state-centric ways of thinking to center the voices of ordinary people in historical and political narratives. Her debut picture book, THESE OLIVE TREES (Viking Books, 2023), is inspired by the experiences of her family who cultivated her love of the earth throughout her upbringing in exile. Aya graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration and a minor in Literary Arts & Studies. Previously a Children's Books & Gifts Design Fellow at Chronicle Books, she is now a Designer at Penguin Workshop at Penguin Random House.