★★★★★ 5
Couldn't put Ida in the Middle down until the end
Format: Hardcover
Ida in the Middle so vividly captures the point of view of a girl not only sorting out feeling like and being treated like an outsider in a new school, but her relationship with her immigrant parents, her younger and older sister (she is in the middle), and her growing awareness of her family's community in the Middle East. It is is warm novel of feelings, friendship, and the magic transport to the "Its A Wonderful Life" alternate reality of what being in 8th grade would be like if her family had stayed in the village where her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins still live. It is also a novel, like those set in other wartimes, that exposes hard realities. Descriptions of her alternative private school in the US and watching the "Arabs Got Talent" music competition on TV have some of sly wit of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, but the learning that Ida and the reader develop about both the community ties and the danger and dehumanization of checkpoints, home demolitions, and raids takes the book to another level of complexity and empathy for difficult circumstances and choices. Throughout, Ida's viewpoint as a 13-year-old trying to understand the world around her is fresh and appealing. She proves to be an unexpectedly level-headed protagonist as the plot carries her into danger and into new readiness for action. Through the course of the novel, both the reader's and Ida's empathy grows for the desperate situation of Palestinian farmers whose land is under siege (and of all living under occupation), for parents' struggle over the choice to remain out of the country, and for the daily decisions to claim joy and pleasure even if it entails contradictions. Ida left me energized and inspired, and ready to gift this book to the middle-grade kids I know, and also to my teacher friends who keep books in their classrooms for students to read.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2023
