Customer Reviews

NADIA THE WILLFUL (Dragonfly Books)

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3 star:		(1)
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This is a wonderful story about the different reactions to death told through a child's eyes. It is a somewhat simplistic story about a sister and her family's loss of the oldest brother. When you lose a loved one you have two choices; to try to block out the pain and in the process block out the memory of that person or to celebrate that life keeping the memory alive in your heart.

Nadia the Willful was a great story. The setting of the story was in the Middle East many years ago. The main characters were Madia, Sheik and Tari. My favorite character was Nadia because she always helped people. I would recommend this book to people ten to thirteen years old.

This story started in the desert were this little ear tipered girl was and her brother was the only one who made her happy.But one day her brother hamed went in the desert and never came back and her father said any one who spoke of his name they would be puneched.And one day a sheperd boy got couht speaking of Hameds name and he was going to be vanesed .But Nadia spoke to her father and they speak of Hameds name today.

Charming charcoal illustrations. A young girl teaches her father, the Sheikh, and her whole bedouin tribe, some lessons about love and loss in this story a girl's determination in the death of a favorite brother. Her refusal to obey her father's orders that no one should say the name of the brother, Nadia earns the nickname "Willful". But when her determination of keep alive the memory of the young man teaches her father that this is the only way he himself can remember the boys voice, or the memories near, her father calls everyone in the tribe together and announces that she must be called "Nadia the Wise."

Teachers/Librarians: order this long out-of-print work for your students, Kindergarten to 6th grade. Never mind that one elementary teacher told me she was reprimanded by some Christian fundamentalist parents who objected to the story on the grounds that "we don't need to spend time learning about 'those' people" and that they objected to the girl's defiance of her father. My response was "poor Arab women. . . if they are obedient we call them oppressed, if they are strong we call them bad role models. . . "

This story is about a girl and her dead bother. She talked about her brother and it eases the pain. She lived in a tribe. Her tribe lived in the desert. They owned a bunch of sheep.