When Tammar Stein discovered a topic others seemed to be avoiding, she decided to write a book about it. The result is The Six-Day Hero, a novel for middle-schoolers about the Six-Day War between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, which happened 50 years ago in June 1967.
“If you hear about the West Bank and the settlements and wonder, How in the world did this mess get started?, the Six-Day War is how that got started,” says Stein, who lives in South Arlington. It’s a sensitive subject that many book publishers would just as soon avoid, but “I think that’s a huge mistake,” she adds. “If we want to find solutions, we have to find out how it began.”
In researching the book, Stein interviewed people who fought in and lived through the war, including a woman who, as a 12-year-old, spent two days hiding in her school’s bomb shelter. Released in April by Kar-Ben Publishing, The Six-Day Hero is Stein’s fifth title for kids and teens.