Guess how much I love you ;-)

I grew up with stories like The Red Ridding Hood, The Sleeping Beauty or Snow-White ... and, of course, Romanian stories.

Have you ever thought what stories do children read nowadays? I took a peak at the shelf with children's books and I have discovered a very beautiful book called "Guess how much I love you" by Sam McBratney and illustrated by Anita Jeram. And this tiny book has brought me more happiness than the other two books of short stories by Etgar Keret which I bought today.

So, guess how much I love you ...

Sayed Kashua "Dancing Arabs"

In the twelfth grade I understood for the first time what '48 was. That it's called the War of Independence. In twelfth grade I understood that a Zionist was what we called a Sahyuni, and it wasn't a swearword. I knew the word. That's how we used to curse one another. I'd been sure that Sahyuni was a kind of fat guy, like a bear. Suddenly I understood that Zionism is an ideology. In civics lessons and Jewish history classes, I started to understand that my aunt from Tulkarm is called a refugee, that the Arabs in Israel are called a minority. In twelfth grade I understood that the problem was serious. I understood what a national homeland was, what anti-Semitism was. I heard for the first time about "two thousand years of exile" and how the Jews had fought against the Arabs and the British. I didn’t believe it. No way. The English had wanted the Jews here, after all. In Bible class, I discovered that it was Isaac, not Ismael, who'd been replaced with a sheep.

Kashua, Sayed (2004): Dancing Arabs, translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger, New York, Grove Press, pg. 117

dedication from Zeruya Shalev

Zeruya Shalev, Bucharest - Bookfest 5.06.2008

http://www.romanialibera.ro/a126296/atacul-terorist-nu-mi-a-afectat-literatura.html

Yehuda Atlas at Helicon

This week I went to a public lecture of Yehuda Atlas on children literature, hosted by Helicon Society for the Advancement of Poetry in Israel. It was a special evening, since is the first time I went to a cultural event in Israel (which I myself haven't organized) and the first time I met an Israeli poet.

Yehuda Atlas is known for his short poems written from the child's perspective. His lecture was extremely interesting and inspiring, and offered me a new perspective on children's perception of the world, apart from the perspectives already known to me from my previous experience as Hebrew teacher. I had the great honour to share with him my first impressions concerning his lecture.

And since that night I have become an admirer of Mr. Yehuda Atlas' poems.

And the person who, not only literally, opened the door for me to the Israeli poetry is Mr. Amir Or.

I dreamed
I was dead,
But suddenly I knew
This is not true.
Because if indeed
I was dead,
How did I know
That I was dead?

(translated by Parparush)

"Uf gozal..." vs. Bialik's 'efroach'

Thanks to A. I know what's the difference between "gozal" and "efroach" - the first is a baby bird which has the nest on the trees and the latter is a baby bird which has the nest on the ground. And A. told me that Bialik made a mistake because he talked about a baby bird from a nest on the tree, but actually he calls it "efroach" instead of "gozal". And still, a small mistake for the sake of the rhyme didn't stopped him from becoming a great poet!

קֵן לַצִּפּוֹר

קֵן לַצִּפּוֹר

בֵּין הָעֵצִים,

וּבַקֵּן לָהּ

שָׁלֹשׁ בֵּיצִים.

וּבְכָל-בֵּיצָה

– הַס, פֶּן תָּעִיר –

יָשֵׁן לוֹ

אֶפְרוֹחַ זָעִיר.