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Around the World in Books / Oman
A Sunny Children’s Book About A Place With A Shady History
A third-grader loves the giant sea turtles in a sanitized tale of life in a sultanate with a poor human rights record
This is the 18th post in the “Around the World in Books” series that is reviewing 30 books from 30 countries in the first 30 days of March.
It’s hard to know what to say about this romanticized portrait of Oman. The Turtle of Oman, a novel for 8-to-12-year-olds, celebrates a country that has a sorry human rights record and a border region the U.S. State Department warns people not to visit “due to terrorism and armed conflict.”
The latest edition of the book came out five years ago, and a new sultan has since risen to power who may make changes. And its hero, a third-grader, can hardly be expected to understand the implications of his country’s human rights violations. Would it be appropriate, in any case, to mention them in a book for such young readers? Even so, this novel may make you queasy.
The Turtle of Oman is a largely plotless book that reads less like a novel than a travelogue, written by an acclaimed poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, who has taught in Oman, and handsomely illustrated by Betsy…
