A Map for Falasteen

By Maysa Odeh - Author, Aliaa Betawi - Illustrator

The O’Brian Press Ltd. 2024

A Map for Falasteen is a story rooted in Maysa Odeh’s family history.

Odeh explains that, as a child, she would search for her homeland on every map. At school, she waited for her teachers to tell the story of her people. They never did.

Behind the book lies another, more intimate story: that of her grandmother. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, she fled with her eight children to Jordan and endured the loss of two of them. Odeh pieced together much of this story through other relatives, rather than from her grandmother herself. And yet, what Odeh remembers most is her joy: “she was always laughing.”

There is something deeply familiar in the way people can carry the weight of family history with dignity and remarkable resilience, but also in the reserve with which experiences of loss and upheaval are sometimes held. Silence is a language too. A story can be transmitted in other ways—in a gesture, a look, a smile, an object, or in what is carried and passed from one generation to another.

The book follows a young girl, Falasteen, as she searches for her homeland. When her teacher asks the children to show on a map where their families come from, Falasteen cannot find Palestine. Her teacher believes there is no such place.

So Falasteen takes her question home.

Piece by piece, through her grandparents and her mother, she discovers her family history. But one question remains: how can she be sure Palestine is there when she has never seen it?

The choice of Falasteen as the protagonist’s name is wonderfully original. Falasteen/فلسطين is Arabic for Palestine.

Aliaa Betawi, herself a Palestinian artist, brings this world to life through illustrations rich in culturally grounded details. These details are not there simply to signal identity; they are woven naturally into Falasteen’s family and everyday life.

Falasteen and her family remain at the centre of their own story. When Falasteen cannot find the mirror she needs at school—one in which she can see herself reflected—she turns to her family, to their memories, their knowledge and the stories they carry.

Beautifully crafted.