Invisible Walls

Gelbart-Avni was awarded the 1994 Janusz Korczak Prize for this moving book on social outcasts. Dalya, 12, sees herself as an average girl but her smart best friend Mirit follows the beat of a different drummer. Mirit’s caustic tongue offends an especially popular boy and the whole class boycotts her.

This experience makes Dalya sensitive to outcasts and she chooses this subject for her class project, supervised by Uriel, a sociologist and a newcomer in town. Uriel is outraged when Dalya tells him about the ban on Mirit and helps her end the boycott. He reveals that he is an outcast too; his bouts of clinical depression caused his fianceé to leave him many years before. Dalya learns that that woman is her mother, who forbids Dalya to see Uriel. Tragedy follows as Uriel loses dignity, self respect and hope.