Not So Shy

When 13-year-old Shai’s family moves to California for her dad’s job, she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to go back home to Israel. Things start looking up when Shai’s neighbor and new friend, Kay-Lee, tells her about a poster contest with a prize of a plane ticket to the place of the winner’s choice. Shai just has to win so she can go back to Israel and live with her grandparents. Meanwhile, the school bullies target Shai with antisemitic comments and call her Muslim classmate Hakim a terrorist. Shai stands up for Hakim, and they become friends. Just as Shai is starting to feel at home in San Diego, her grandparents are caught up in a terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv, leaving her Safta in a coma. Shai and her family fly back to Israel, where Shai realizes that there are things about America that she is missing and that it might be possible to feel at home in both places.