Mona’s grandmother, her Sitti, lives in a small Palestinian village on the other side of the earth. Once, Mona went to visit her. The couldn’t speak each other’s language, so they made up their own. They learned about each other’s worlds, and they discovered each other’s secrets. Then it was time for Mona to go back home, back to the other side of the earth. But even though there were millions of miles and millions of people between them, they remained true neighbors forever. Kindergarten-Grade 3-When Mona travels from her home in the U.S. to visit her grandmother's small Palestinian village on the West Bank, she must rely on her father to translate at first, but soon she and Sitti are communicating perfectly. With verve and a childlike sense of wonder, Mona relates some of the sights, sounds, and tastes she is introduced to as well as "the secrets" she learns from spending time in the wise, elderly woman's company. Upon her return home, Mona writes to the president describing the woman and expressing her concerns about the situation in her homeland. "I vote for peace. My grandmother votes with me." says Mona. The simple, poetic text is accompanied by exquisitely rendered mixed-medium paintings. They are suffused with the light and colors of the desert, and incorporate subtle and evocative collage touches. A story about connections that serves as a thoughtful, loving affirmation of the bonds that transcend language barriers, time zones, and national borders. Luann Toth, School Library Journal Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Ages 4-8. Sitti means grandmother in Arabic, and in this lyrical picture book an American child misses her grandmother who lives in a Palestinian village "on the other side of the earth." The child remembers when she visited Sitti. They didn't speak the same language: at first they talked through her father, who spoke both English and Arabic, and then they invented their own language with signs and hums and claps. She remembers the house and the countryside, the culture and the clothes, and the intimacy of brushing Sitti's hair. She also remembers the painful leave-taking ("Even my father kept blowing his nose and walking outside"), and back in the U.S., she writes a letter to the President: "If the people of the United States could meet Sitti, they'd like her, for sure." Carpenter's paintings show the physical bond between child and grandmother when they're close and their imaginary connection when they're far away from each other. Like the human embrace, the pictures flow with soft curving lines of clothes and hills, birds and sky, all part of the circle of the rolling earth. There are too few books like this one about Arabs and Arab Americans as people. Nye edited the powerful global poetry collection for older readers, This Same Sky (1992); that title applies here, too, showing that "people are far apart, but connected." Every child who longs for a distant grandparent will recognize the feeling. Hazel Rochman Drowsing in bed or aloft in her swing at home in the US, Mona recalls visiting ``Sitti'' (Grandma) on ``the other side of the earth.'' Though Sitti speaks only Arabic (she and Mona ``talked through my father, as if he were a telephone''), the two had their own language of gestures and glances, hums, and claps. Sitti showed Mona around her neighborhood and shared with her the pleasure of traditional household tasks. Nye, a poet who edited This Same Sky (1992, ALA Notable), deftly assembles particulars signifying the warm and enduring bond growing between Sitti and her American granddaughter, recounting the incidents with quiet eloquence. In Carpenter's collages, vigorously painted figures and settings are enriched with photographed details, fabric patterns, and--in a striking opening spread--a global map as a delicate underlay. Mona's narrative concludes with an explicit, heartfelt plea for peace, addressed to the President of the US; but the universal humanity that's implicit in her lyrical portrait of Sitti is more powerful still. (Picture book. 4-9) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Naomi Shihab Nye is an award-winning writer and editor whose work has appeared widely. She edited the ALA Notable international poetry collection, This Same Sky, and The Tree Is Older Than You Are: Poems and Paintings from Mexico , as well as The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East . Her books of poems include Fuel , Red Suitcase , and Words Under the Words . A Guggenheim fellow, she is also the author of the young adult novel Habibi , which was named an ALA Notable Book, a Best Book for Young Adults, and winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award as well as the Book Publishers of Texas award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Naomi lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Michael, and their son, Madison. Nancy Carpenter is the acclaimed illustrator of Thomas Jefferson and the Mammoth H