Not So Shy by Noa Nimrodi; Kar-Ben Publishing © 2023; ISBN 9781728-427928; 256 pages; $9.99.
SAN DIEGO – In this novel written for students in 4th through 8th grades, 12-year-old Shai has just moved with her mother, father, and little sister from Israel to San Diego County and she’s not at all happy about having left her relatives and friends.
When she tells her name to her Korean-American next door neighbor, Kay-Lee, the girl responds that she is used to “shy” people. It is just one example of linguistic confusion that Shai faces as she adapts to her new surroundings. Imagine how hurt she felt before playing a trumpet in a performance by the school band when a boy she thought was a friend told her to “break a leg.”
Shai resents her father, a biologist, who has taken a job in San Diego County to develop an avocado that won’t turn brown. In the first place, she feels that her dad put his job ahead of his family by agreeing to a job far from Israel. And, secondly, she is suspicious of genetically modified organisms. Eventually both concerns are talked through with her parents.
There also is the problem of trying to fit in at school with American contemporaries, whose customs are foreign to her and whose values, at times, conflict with hers. She doesn’t like one group’s tendency to make fun of other girls who are non-conformists, such as Kay-Lee who wears multicolored dresses that are out of fashion.
For the first time in her life, she encounters antisemitism from a classmate who “jokes” about the Holocaust and who also denigrates an Iraqi-American boy as a “terrorist.” Shai and Hakim find common cause against the bully. Meeting Hakim’s mother, who cooks with Arab spices just as Shai’s grandmother does, builds the friendship between the families of the Jewish girl and the Muslim boy.
Artistically inclined, Shai paints a mural in her room. After she breaks her arm while trying to slide down a flight of stairs, she decorates her cast with butterflies. She hopes her art is good enough to prevail in a contest for students in which the first-place winner will be awarded round-trip tickets to anywhere in the world. She figures she’ll fly to Israel and persuade her grandparents to let her live with them.
In time, however, Shai’s attitude about America begins to soften. She has developed some friendships. She has gained recognition through her art. A trip to Israel under very unhappy circumstances makes her reevaluate her feelings about the United States. Strangely enough, she realizes, when she is in America, she misses Israel and when she is in Israel, she misses America.
I imagine that any child who moves from one city to another, and from one group of friends to others, will find that this well-written book reflects some of their own conflicting emotions, which may be even more intense if they have been moved from a country with a different language to another.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
Thank you so much for the lovely review!
Happy Passover