In this edited collection on Jewish and Arab childhood in Israel, contributors illuminate the experiences of the individual child with family and community, the formal education system, and informal leisure culture, and they explore representations of childhood and its perceptions in literature and culture.

This book is a result of the growing public and academic interest in the variety of childhoods that take place side by side in the multicultural state of Israel, despite its tiny geographical dimensions.

In a collection of groundbreaking articles, the book describes various features of Israeli childhoods – in the present and recent past – in both Arab and Jewish societies.

The first section of the book - 'Childhood and Environment in Israel' - addresses the various spaces in which childhood practices occurred and still occur in Israel – the intimate home environment, the educational environment, playgrounds, and many others. The second section – 'Childhoods and Power Structures in Israeli Literature' illuminates the perceptions and images of childhood, and describes the extensive and heterogenic variety of childhood representations in Jewish and Arab literature.

Scholars of culture, society, education, and literature – Jews and Arabs – have joined forces to encourage in-depth thinking about perceptions of childhood in the diverse Israeli society, the status of children in Arab and Jewish societies, and the resources invested to nurture them from a global aspect (as individuals with universal duties and rights) and/or a local point of view (as a national asset, as designers of the nation's future, or, alternatively, as a burden, nuisance or threat).

Contents

Introduction: Childhoods in Multicultural Israeli Society

Einat Baram Eshel

Part I

Childhood and Environment in Israel

Chapter 1

Teaching the Children to Play: The Establishment of the First Playgrounds in Palestine during the British Mandate Period

Zipora Shehory-Rubin, Shifra Shvarts

Chapter 2

Girls at the Intersection: Discourse on Girl Labor in the Zionist Women Workers’ Movement

Orian Zakai

Chapter 3

Between Wonder and Horror: The Presentation of Palestinian Child Beggars in the Docufiction Film Hard Change

Yoad Eliaz

Chapter 4

Constructing Early Childhood in the Domestic Space: Jewish and Arab Communities in Israel

Ofra Tene, Orit Abuhav

Chapter 5

The Experience of Shared Childhood: Jewish and Arab Children in a Bilingual and Binational School

Wurud Jayusi, Ilana Paul-Binyamin

Chapter 6

Multiculturalism in Lantern Library Education Program for Palestinian-Arab Children in Israel

Athar Ḥaj Yaḥya

Chapter 7

Representation of Three Palestinian Girls in Three Israeli Television Series: Change and Hope

Ornat Turin, Arielle Friedman

Chapter 8

Israeli Childhood in India: Perceptions and Practices of “Proper” Childhood through the Case of Israeli Families Backpacking in India

Khen Ya’ari

Part II

Childhood and Power Structures in Israeli Literature

Chapter 9

In the Shadow of the Wall: Representation of the Separation Wall in Palestinian and Israeli Children`s Literature

Loaay Wattad, Roi Silberberg

Chapter 10

Reflections on Photography, Place, and Identity: Children of the Arab Minority in Israeli Photographed Picturebooks

Einat Baram Eshel

Chapter 11

A Treasure of Power and Control: The Encounter between an Arab Boy and a Jewish-Settler Boy in Emuna Elon’s Fathi’s Treasure

Amer Dahamshe

Chapter 12

Acceptance of the “Other” after the Oslo Accords in Arabic-Palestinian Short Stories for Children in Israel: Mustafa Murrar’s Stories as a Sample

Hanan Mousa

Chapter 13

Magic Tricks and Constructive Confrontations: Representations of the Arab “Other” in Contemporary Israeli Children’s Literature (2012-2019)

Smadar Falk-Peretz

Chapter 14

Childhood Representations in the Palestinian Short Stories of Muḥammad Naffāꜥ

Kawthar Jabir-Kassoum

Chapter 15

Construction of the Character of Young Labiba in the Novel Ein Khafsha by Rajaa Bakriyyeh

Lana Wehbi

Chapter 16

Girls at the Café: On Israeli Women Writers’ Representations of Childhood and Girls' Experiences

Shai Rudin