Ronit & Jamil

by Pamela L. Laskin Narrated by Nira Amiel, Assaf Cohen, Aylam Orian, Youssif Kamal

Overview

Pamela L. Laskin's beautiful and lyrical novel in verse delivers a fresh and captivating retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet that transports the star-crossed lovers to the modern-day Israel-Palestine conflict.

Ronit, an Israeli girl, lives on one side of the fence. Jamil, a Palestinian boy, lives on the other side. Only miles apart but separated by generations of conflict-much more than just the concrete blockade between them. Their fathers, however, work in a distrusting but mutually beneficial business arrangement, a relationship that brings Ronit and Jamil together. And lightning strikes. The kind of lightning that transcends barrier fences, war, and hatred.

The teenage lovers fall desperately into the throes of forbidden love, one that would create an irreparable rift between their families if it were discovered. But a love this big can only be kept secret for so long. Ronit and Jamil must face the fateful choice to save their lives or their loves, as it may not be possible to save both.

Editorial Reviews

Booklist

[T]he modern verse-flecked with Arabic, Hebrew, and iconic excerpts from the play itself-will ease romance-hungry teens into both Shakespeare’s original and the challenging context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A welcome nod to hope in the face of the impossible.

Horn Book Magazine

Supplementary information offers context, including language translations, additional story details, and references to other works. The small, handheld trim size reinforces the story’s intimate feel.

Jacqueline Woodson

Ronit & Jamil is as beautiful as it is timely. This modern-day Romeo and Juliet is a story that is at once supremely specific and stunningly universal. The poems stand on their own while holding together a narrative that you want to live inside of long after the final page.

Kirkus Reviews

2016-11-06
A timeless tale of star-crossed love set amid modern-day conflict.Laskin's novel in verse takes forbidden teen love à la Romeo and Juliet and sets it in present-day Israel. She portrays the Montagues and Capulets as Jews and Arabs, casting Ronit as the daring daughter of an Israeli pharmacist who falls for Jamil, the alluring son of a Palestinian doctor. What gives this contemporary reprise its ironic edge is that while the protagonists' fathers work together and routinely set aside political differences in the service of healing the sick, their ingrained cultural prejudices prevent them from accepting that their beloved children have fallen for each other. Laskin is at pains to show how similar the teens are: they've been raised on the same foods—"hummus, falafel, baba ghanoush"—and both wish to buck convention, Ronit to duck her mandatory army service, Jamil to avoid following in his father's footsteps to a career in medicine. Throughout, Laskin's spare first-person poems and prefatory and end notes help educate young readers as to the gravity of the political stakes in this war-torn region where, while Ronit texts that "there is no separation barrier" between them, they both lament that their physical reality proves quite the opposite: "This wall / is so high; / 25 feet of concrete / 435 miles long." At once romantic and revealing, an important window into contemporary conditions in the Middle East. (Verse fiction. 14-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173813473
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/21/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

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