Stephanie’s third-grade class is prepar­ing for the arrival of Ziv, a new stu­dent from Israel. Togeth­er the class learns about the his­to­ry, geog­ra­phy, cul­ture, and accom­plish­ments of Israel. There are maps, a recipe for hum­mus as well as an intro­duc­tion to a few basic Hebrew words. The book opens with, ​“New kid alert!” an invi­ta­tion to join in the excite­ment of the class. The class is pre­sent­ed in the first and last chap­ters, the inter­im chap­ters read like a text book of what the stu­dents in Mr. Louth’s class may research before being intro­duced to Ziv, the new stu­dent. It is dif­fi­cult to write an objec­tive piece about Israel in any con­text, and this book approach­es objec­tiv­i­ty. There are some beau­ti­ful pho­tographs of the Baha’i Tem­ple, Cae­saria and Bet She’an. A heavy empha­sis is placed on jux­ta­pos­ing the old and the new and por­tray­ing Israel as a mod­ern coun­try built on the old. On the oth­er hand, the map pre­sent­ed has the Golan Heights being a part of Syr­ia, a bound­ary that is fac­tu­al­ly inac­cu­rate. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are delin­eat­ed as sep­a­rate enti­ties. In addi­tion, many of the Jews pre­sent­ed are ultra-ortho­dox, which does not give an accu­rate por­tray­al of the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion. Arabs are not seen in any of the pic­tures, and the Dome of the Rock is referred to, incor­rect­ly, as a mosque. The first peo­ple men­tioned in the time­line of con­querors are the Baby­lo­ni­ans, it is there­fore dif­fi­cult for stu­dents to under­stand where King Solomon fits in when he is men­tioned on the next pages. The author states that Euro­pean Jews decid­ed that they want­ed to go to the Land of Israel due to Hitler, dis­re­gard­ing the fact that polit­i­cal Zion­ism began over forty years before Hitler rose to pow­er. There are many inter­est­ing tid­bits to draw the stu­dents in and to make Israel a rel­e­vant mod­ern coun­try includ­ing the fact that Jesus was a Jew from that region, tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments, and par­al­lels in child­hood hob­bies. The book is appro­pri­ate in a school set­ting for stu­dents in grades 2 – 5 under the direc­tion of a knowl­edge­able teacher with edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als that counter some of the inaccuracies.