The Never-Ending Greenness: We Made Israel Bloom Book

This book is one from the Israeli side and heavily propagandized. At one point it even held the subtitle of "We Made Israel Bloom." It begins with a little boy from Vilna, a beautiful village filled with trees until the Nazis came and turned it to mud and brick. His family escaped the ghetto and, when the war was over, went to Israel. When there, he begins creating his own grove of trees after having a dream of a forest surrounding his house. There is no mention upon the family's arrival of any natives to the land, making it seem as though no one was living there. It is just a barren land where there was war, though there's no clarification to this war. When his father returns home from fighting, he tells him that thousands of years ago (i.e. when the Jews were there originally) the land was filled with forests, but that conquerors had "stolen from the land" (Waldman 22). The implication throughout is that those who have been living there were wasting the land, and only they can bring it back to life. Though not good to present by itself, it would make a good example of propaganda literature, especially if paired with something dealing with such literature. This book is best for middle school age readers, or for younger readers if read out loud, as the text is somewhat long and the print relatively small.