Hope Is an Arrow: The Story of Lebanese-American Poet Khalil Gibran

This striking biography of Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) portrays the poet as a sensitive boy long torn between two countries. The book is founded on an image from Gibran’s 1923 classic, The Prophet: of children described as the arrows shot from the bow that is their parents. McCarthy weaves the simile of “a boy shot from a bow like an arrow” throughout, portraying Gibran as a child with “a secret hope” of connecting people through love and understanding. Violent clashes in Lebanon deeply trouble young Gibran, and drive his Maronite family to the U.S. where, in Boston, “people spit at his family’s differences.” There, Gibran begins to express himself through art, and travels between the two countries result in early writings and eventual success. Holmes’s bold, color-saturated collages and acrylics are a stirring match for McCarthy’s poetic prose—the family sails across “the deeper, darker Atlantic Ocean, which murmured like a giant in its sleep”—in a telling that emphasizes the figure’s complexity. Extensive back matter expands on Gibran’s life story. Ages 6–9. (June)