Your donation during our spring member drive helps power our public service journalism. On our hike in Tuff Canyon, my 4-year-old stooped to grasp and inspect volcanic rocks, pockmarked and rust-colored.ĭid you know that the San Antonio Report is a nonprofit newsroom? Nye’s poetic eye lingered on a stone discovered by Sidi with three circular lines like map-route tracings. Sidi and Aref watched Bedouin camel caravans on the edge of the sandy horizon just as we scanned the distant mesas from our campsite for imaginary Comanches, hidden just over the cliff border with Mexico. Credit Flickr user Peter Pawlowski.Īs Aref and Sidi traveled by Jeep into the shifting sands of the Omani desert for an overnight adventure, we sped through parched desert ourselves. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.The Hajar Mountains. Naomi Shihab Nye has created what Kirkus called “a warm and humorous peek at the profound and mundane details of moving from one country to another-a perfect pick for kids on the move.” Features black-and-white spot art and decorations by Betsy Peterschmidt. This accessible, exquisite novel shines with gentle humor and explores themes of moving, family, nature, and immigration. At each stop, Sidi finds a small stone that he later slips into Aref’s suitcase-mementos of home. They visit the camp of a thousand stars deep in the desert, they sleep on Sidi’s roof, they fish in the Gulf of Oman and dream about going to India, they travel to the nature reserve to watch the sea turtles. But rather than pack, Aref and Sidi go on a series of adventures. His mother is desperate for him to pack his suitcase-but he refuses. He does not want to live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his parents will go to graduate school. He does not want to leave his elementary school, his friends, or his beloved grandfather, Sidi. This book was awarded a 2015 Middle East Book Award, was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association, and includes extra material by the author.Īref does not want to leave Oman. Praised by the Horn Book as “both quiet and exhilarating,” this novel by the acclaimed poet and National Book Award Finalist Naomi Shihab Nye follows Aref Al-Amri as he says goodbye to everything and everyone he loves in his hometown of Muscat, Oman, as his family prepares to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye