cover image The Never-Ending Greenness: We Made Israel Bloom

The Never-Ending Greenness: We Made Israel Bloom

Neil Waldman. Boyds Mills Press, $16.95 (30pp) ISBN 978-1-59078-064-0

At the end of WWII, a boy and his family move from Lithuania's Vilna ghetto to Israel and begin planting trees in barren land in The Never-Ending Greenness: We Made Israel Bloom (1997) by Neil Waldman. But even before the trees grow, Waldman depicts Van Gogh-esque landscapes of waving fiesta-bright lines and confetti-like skies. An author's note explains that the tradition continues in the annual tree-planting ceremony for the holiday of Tu b'Shvat.