A children's nonfiction book about Palestinian history and displacement has been withdrawn from Penguin Random House just weeks before it was due in stores, after months of disagreement between its authors and the publisher over how to characterize the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, according to reporting published Thursday by the Guardian.
Displacement and the Palestinian American Story was commissioned in November 2024 by Random House Children's Books as the eighth title in its "Race to the Truth" series, which pairs young-reader nonfiction with authors from the communities whose histories they cover. It was written by Alana Hadid, a philanthropist, activist and the older sister of models Bella and Gigi Hadid, and Jenan Matari, a Palestinian American author and communications strategist, drawing partly on their own families' displacement in 1948.
A dispute over one passage
According to the authors, who shared draft manuscripts and emails with the Guardian, the central dispute concerned a short passage on the October 2023 attacks. Their text argued, citing a UN General Assembly resolution, that people under "colonial domination" have a right to resist; editors later added a line stating the attacks "were a violation of international law," which the authors said was inserted without their approval after they believed the manuscript was finalized. By August, Random House proposed keeping the authors' original wording but adding a publisher's note and raising the recommended reading age; the authors withdrew the book in early September rather than accept that approach.
"It became clear that Penguin was never actually going to allow us just to write the book we wanted to write," Hadid told the Guardian. Matari, who has faced cancellations of events for an earlier children's book amid criticism of her commentary on the war, said the proposed disclaimer made continuing untenable: "It was no longer the book we wrote."
A Random House spokesperson said the editing process "followed our standard bookmaking procedures" and that the company ultimately supported the authors' decision to withdraw, adding it remained "committed to bringing the Palestinian perspective to young readers." Saira Rao, who co-created the Race to the Truth series, told the Guardian that earlier authors in the series had been given more latitude, and that she would not pursue further installments with the publisher.
The book has since found a new home at Interlink Books, a Palestinian-owned US publisher that specializes in Middle Eastern and diaspora literature, which plans to release it next year. "As a second-generation Palestinian-American, it's a book I wish I had had growing up," Interlink co-owner Leyla Moushabeck told the Guardian.
The episode is the latest in a string of disputes across US publishing and bookselling over how Palestinian history and the Gaza war are framed for young readers, with several of Matari's own promotional events for her earlier book cancelled by venues over the past year amid public pressure.
