The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the celebrated author of As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow comes a poignant novel about a Syrian American girl who uses a magical sketchbook to turn her grief into art, painting miraculous murals of her mother’s life in Syria.
Seventeen-year-old Jihad Dabbagh has always seen life with a heightened sense for colors, one of many magical blessings the women in her family possess. But Jihad's gift changes depending on her mood. When depression sets in, the world is a colorless oasis, and in the wake of her mother's sudden death, the world has become a permanent shade of grey.
Broken by tragedy, Jihad's family doesn't believe her color loss. Her father sends her to the elite Braxton Academy to finish her senior year. There, Jihad's name and hijab put a target on her back. Her haven comes in the form of an old sketchbook carved from a tree in her hometown in Syria—a country she only knew through her mother's stories. Jihad hasn't picked up a brush in over a year, but finds herself channeling the colors of her hurt, pain, and grief as she paints the story of her mother's journey in Syria.
When graffiti of that same mural starts magically popping up all over New York, her art goes viral and the world takes notice, the threat of legal consequences is imminent. To reclaim her voice, Jihad will have to paint a new future for herself and Braxton, guided by the resilience of her mother's story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Syrian American teenager uses art to navigate Islamophobia and grief in this searing speculative novel by Katouh (As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow). "All the color has disappeared" from 17-year-old artist Jihad's world following her mother's sudden death more than a year ago. After her withdrawn father transfers Jihad from her Queens public school to Braxton Academy, she reluctantly attends, calculating that the school's pedigree could bolster her chances of gaining entrance to her dream art school. At Braxton, she reunites with childhood friend Alexis, who initially welcomes Jihad into her social circle, until verbal bullying from Alexis's friends escalates to physical harm. Threaded throughout realistic conflict is Jihad's reckoning with feelings of disconnect from generational magic passed down through her maternal line, which allows her to see colors that reveal a person's essence. When she begins sketching in a notebook discovered inside a family heirloom vanity, her drawings manifest as murals across the city, forcing Jihad to confront her tangled emotions on a grand scale. Unflinching text depicts systemic failures that leave Muslim American teens vulnerable to physical and emotional violence as well as institutional neglect, and magical elements lend moments of wonder to the novel's weighty messaging. It's a powerful exploration of injustice, identity, and the radical act of making oneself feel seen. Ages 12–up.
