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Shifa Saltagi Safadi is the author of Kareem Between and several picture books, including The Gift of Eid. She has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, teaches English Language Arts at a local middle school, and reviews Muslim books on her blog, Muslim Mommy Blog. More about this author >
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From the publisher:
Seventh grade begins, and Kareem’s already fumbled it.
His best friend moved away, he messed up his tryout for the football team, and because of his heritage, he was voluntold to show the new kid—a Syrian refugee with a thick and embarrassing accent—around school. Just when Kareem thinks his middle school life has imploded, the hotshot QB promises to get Kareem another tryout for the squad. There’s a catch: to secure that chance, Kareem must do something he knows is wrong.
Then, like a surprise blitz, Kareem’s mom returns to Syria to help her family but can’t make it back home. If Kareem could throw a penalty flag on the fouls of his school and home life, it would be for unnecessary roughness.
Kareem is stuck between. Between countries. Between friends, between football, between parents—and between right and wrong. It’s up to him to step up, find his confidence, and navigate the beauty and hope found somewhere in the middle.
A heartfelt and timely story in verse, Kareem Between captures the challenges of balancing cultural identity and growing up feeling caught between two worlds. Shifa Saltagi Safadi offers a powerful reflection on belonging—highlighting with poetic precision and humor the voice, strengths, fears, and flawed but relatable decisions of a 7th-grade Muslim American boy. Kareem faces the life-changing effects of Islamophobia in contemporary America while claiming readers’ hearts in the process.
