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Counting Up the Olive Tree: A Palestine Number Book
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 24, 2024
A book against erasure, in an era where settler colonialism and apartheid persist, when they should not.
April 12, 2025
A second book by Bashi that features Palestinian children.
A diverse group of 11 children are warming up for a soccer match in their village's greenspace, when a woodcutter comes to chop down the last olive tree in town. Although the children plead with him not to cut down the tree. He decides to eat his lunch first and takes a nap under the tree. While he is asleep at the base of the tree, all 11 children climb into the tree. When their opponents show up, those children also climb up in the tree. When the woodcutter wakes up and sees the kids in the tree, he apologizes to the kids - first counting them up to 11, then down to 1 - and apologizes to many adults in the community.
Iranian-Swedish author Bashi dedicates this book to Bill Martin, Jr., then jumps into a contrived story written using rhyming text that is awkwardly modeled after Martin & John Archambault's classic text Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. The clunky text includes a stilted refrain "Tick-tock, tick-tock! Will there be enough time?" Both lacking the charm and lilt found in both the text and refrains of Chicka-Chicka...boom boom! This is used to get them up the tree, but abandoned when the woodcutter wakes up and returns to an uneven text written as poetry. Although the tree is large, very old (with a thick trunk), and ostensibly stable with no decay, one must suspend belief that all 22 kids could fit in the top branches of that tree without breaking any branches breaking. There is little detail that sets this firmly in Palestine except for the mention that this is the last olive tree in Palestine and the exclamation of the word "Ya'llah" (which is an Arabic word, so would be used in many countries that speak Arabic). Backmatter includes author's and illustrator's notes, an ad to support the publisher and one for P Is for Palestine.
Tamil American Nabi H. Ali's illustrations are bright and colorful. They show a group of diverse mostly brown-skinned children (one blond-haired girl with blue eyes and a few with either blue or green eyes) and a few girls on the yellow team wearing hijabs. Hard to tell the ages of the kids, as most are the same height and body shape and come up to the woodcutter's hips in height. I appreciate the inclusion of a cross on top of a church (10% of Palestinians are Christian) and a crescent moon over the dome of a mosque, however the perspective and relationship of these two houses of worship change so they appear to have different positions in the background of the tree. The last image is most confusing of all - it is a silhouette of the backhoe driving away over the soccer hill, with no tree showing in the background.
Again, there are problems with this book. Communities serving a Palestinian population may opt to purchase this as a stopgap so the kids can see themselves in this book replacing it with something of a better quality literature when published.
A diverse group of 11 children are warming up for a soccer match in their village's greenspace, when a woodcutter comes to chop down the last olive tree in town. Although the children plead with him not to cut down the tree. He decides to eat his lunch first and takes a nap under the tree. While he is asleep at the base of the tree, all 11 children climb into the tree. When their opponents show up, those children also climb up in the tree. When the woodcutter wakes up and sees the kids in the tree, he apologizes to the kids - first counting them up to 11, then down to 1 - and apologizes to many adults in the community.
Iranian-Swedish author Bashi dedicates this book to Bill Martin, Jr., then jumps into a contrived story written using rhyming text that is awkwardly modeled after Martin & John Archambault's classic text Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. The clunky text includes a stilted refrain "Tick-tock, tick-tock! Will there be enough time?" Both lacking the charm and lilt found in both the text and refrains of Chicka-Chicka...boom boom! This is used to get them up the tree, but abandoned when the woodcutter wakes up and returns to an uneven text written as poetry. Although the tree is large, very old (with a thick trunk), and ostensibly stable with no decay, one must suspend belief that all 22 kids could fit in the top branches of that tree without breaking any branches breaking. There is little detail that sets this firmly in Palestine except for the mention that this is the last olive tree in Palestine and the exclamation of the word "Ya'llah" (which is an Arabic word, so would be used in many countries that speak Arabic). Backmatter includes author's and illustrator's notes, an ad to support the publisher and one for P Is for Palestine.
Tamil American Nabi H. Ali's illustrations are bright and colorful. They show a group of diverse mostly brown-skinned children (one blond-haired girl with blue eyes and a few with either blue or green eyes) and a few girls on the yellow team wearing hijabs. Hard to tell the ages of the kids, as most are the same height and body shape and come up to the woodcutter's hips in height. I appreciate the inclusion of a cross on top of a church (10% of Palestinians are Christian) and a crescent moon over the dome of a mosque, however the perspective and relationship of these two houses of worship change so they appear to have different positions in the background of the tree. The last image is most confusing of all - it is a silhouette of the backhoe driving away over the soccer hill, with no tree showing in the background.
Again, there are problems with this book. Communities serving a Palestinian population may opt to purchase this as a stopgap so the kids can see themselves in this book replacing it with something of a better quality literature when published.
October 27, 2024
Color me surprised. A big helping of bullshit facilitates learning to count.
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June 6, 2024The idea behind this book had the potential to be really powerful -- the destruction of olive trees in Palestine is tragic -- and the conceit of a group of kids banding together could have been a fun and effective way to help practice counting. But the book is really awkward.
The opening is weird, the counting in the middle doesn't feel particularly helpful for kids, and the ending feels way too unbelievable. Similar to the preceding alphabet book, it often has forced rhymes. The kids are soccer/football players, but my partner said the numbering of positions feels like the author just watched a few soccer games and didn't have any fact-checker.
The Tamil-American illustrator does a good job -- though I continue to wonder why the Iranian author couldn't find any Palestinians to illustrate these picturebooks.
Edit: The Publisher's Note at the end of the book refers to this book as "a social justice homage to Bill Martin Jr. and his Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989), a legendary classic children's book love--for what could possibly be equally important to knowing the letters of the alphabet? The numbers of course!"
I wasn't sure I had ever read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, so I got a copy from the library. It has very little plot/text and mostly functions to familiarize kids with the letters of the alphabet (amidst fun, high-energy rhyme/~plot).
I can see how this book is attempting to homage this, but so much of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom's success is the high-energy fun, whereas this book's plot is more stressful. (The tension of whether the tree will be cut down is maybe intended to mirror/echo the tension of the tree bending with the weight of all the letters climbing it.) The rhythm/rhyme here is also more awkward/strained.
The opening is weird, the counting in the middle doesn't feel particularly helpful for kids, and the ending feels way too unbelievable. Similar to the preceding alphabet book, it often has forced rhymes. The kids are soccer/football players, but my partner said the numbering of positions feels like the author just watched a few soccer games and didn't have any fact-checker.
The Tamil-American illustrator does a good job -- though I continue to wonder why the Iranian author couldn't find any Palestinians to illustrate these picturebooks.
Edit: The Publisher's Note at the end of the book refers to this book as "a social justice homage to Bill Martin Jr. and his Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989), a legendary classic children's book love--for what could possibly be equally important to knowing the letters of the alphabet? The numbers of course!"
I wasn't sure I had ever read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, so I got a copy from the library. It has very little plot/text and mostly functions to familiarize kids with the letters of the alphabet (amidst fun, high-energy rhyme/~plot).
I can see how this book is attempting to homage this, but so much of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom's success is the high-energy fun, whereas this book's plot is more stressful. (The tension of whether the tree will be cut down is maybe intended to mirror/echo the tension of the tree bending with the weight of all the letters climbing it.) The rhythm/rhyme here is also more awkward/strained.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews