Chil­dren’s

Facts and Fig­ures About the Mid­dle East

Lisa McCoy
  • Review
By – August 3, 2012

Twen­ty-three coun­tries are pro­filed under the term Mid­dle East,” includ­ing Soma­lia and Dji­bouti. Since the des­ig­na­tion Mid­dle East” is flu­id, they are not all the same coun­tries that are fea­tured in oth­er books about the region. The first few chap­ters pro­vide overviews of the region today, its geog­ra­phy and cli­mate, and its his­to­ry. Con­sid­er­ing the com­plex­i­ty and vari­ety of Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries, the infor­ma­tion is rather gen­er­al and as much is omit­ted as is includ­ed. This is even more pro­nounced in the next, long chap­ter called The Coun­tries of the Mid­dle East,” which pro­vides terse and far from com­plete cap­sule sum­maries about the his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, and eco­nom­ics of each coun­try. In fact, the chap­ter begins with a dis­claimer say­ing that for more detailed infor­ma­tion, read­ers should look else­where. The final two chap­ters deal with the peo­ple of the region— major eth­nic groups and cul­tures — and a few impor­tant cities. Facts and fig­ures are giv­en in the text, in two coun­try-by-coun­try tables, in a chronol­o­gy, pic­tures of each country’s flag, a list of books — all adult— for fur­ther read­ing, and a list of web­sites. A glos­sary and index are also included. 

Because it dif­fers in so many ways from its neigh­bors, Israel gets short shrift in this book, part of a series for mid­dle school and high school stu­dents that also includes Adam Garfinkle’s excel­lent book, Israel (Mason Crest, 2004). For exam­ple, the Zion­ist move­ment is bare­ly men­tioned and the sta­tus of women in Israeli soci­ety, so dif­fer­ent from oth­er Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries, is obscured by gen­er­al­i­ties about the region as a whole. Any attempt to cov­er the entire region, in only 112 heav­i­ly illus­trat­ed pages is, con­sid­er­ing such sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ences between Israel and the Arab states and Iran, bound to be less than sat­is­fac­to­ry. A bet­ter choice is Michael Kort’s Hand­book of the Mid­dle East (Twen­ty First Cen­tu­ry Books, 2002). Intend­ed for ages 12 – 15.

Lin­da R. Sil­ver is a spe­cial­ist in Jew­ish children’s lit­er­a­ture. She is edi­tor of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish Libraries’ Jew­ish Val­ues­find­er, www​.ajl​jew​ish​val​ues​.org, and author of Best Jew­ish Books for Chil­dren and Teens: A JPS Guide (The Jew­ish Pub­li­ca­tion Soci­ety, 2010) and The Jew­ish Val­ues Find­er: A Guide to Val­ues in Jew­ish Children’s Lit­er­a­ture (Neal-Schu­man, 2008).

Discussion Questions