In the world of Islamic fiction, there are a lot of Eid books out there for children, but this one is definitely more fun than most, especially for the younger crowd. The presentation of a big, bright, hardback book is aimed at 3 to 6 year olds, and reads well out loud, however, the book is very, very inviting, and older kids with happily pick it up and thumb through the 32 pages of rhyming lines as well.
The book starts with Ilyas watching the sky to see if Ramadan is over and if Eid is here. Duck in all his silliness doesn’t know what Eid is and rushes out to get decorations to celebrate. he returns with a Christmas tree and ornaments. Ilyas non judgmentally explains that those are for our Chrisitian neighbors for their holiday. Duck then runs out again and returns with a menorah and dreidel and once again Ilyas explains that those are for our Jewish friends celebrating Hanukkah. Ilyas and Duck then fly away in their hot air balloon to the Masjid to learn about Eid.
The book works for Muslim children to understand what others celebrate and works for non Muslims to see what we celebrate. It is all done in a matter of fact way of celebration, not of doctrine. It is built on the idea that, “There is an Eid for every nation ant his is our Eid.”
Much like the first Ilyas and Duck book, this one is great to have around and read again and again!
A calabash cat in the middle of Africa wants to see where the world ends. When the road stops at the edge of the great desert he thinks it stops there. But a Camel corrects him and offers him a ride on his back to show him where the world ends. When they get across the desert, the camel puts him down on the edge of the grassland and tells him this is where the world ends. A horse corrects him, that in fact this is not where the world ends and offers to show him where it does. He climbs up on the horse and the gallop through the grassland. This continues through the jungle on a tiger, the ocean on a whale, then on the back of an eagle all the way home. Written on a 3.3 level, there are 32 pages with a author’s note about where the idea for the story came from. The book works well for story time and the repetition makes it good for bedtime too.
This beautiful, beautiful book tells of a little and sparsely known event in history. During the holocaust The Grand Mosque of Paris served as a place of refuge for many North African Jews. Many who passed through the vast gardens and beautiful Mosque were given fake documents of conversion, tombstones with their family names inscribed, and access to truly underground passageways (subterranean mazes), as the Muslims of Paris offered assistance to keep their Jewish brother’s and sister’s safe from the Nazi regime. Many of the stories were recently uncovered and with the passage of time, so much of the information has been lost. As a result the book is a bit choppy, each page tells what is known about the Muslims’ assistance in some capacity, but does not flow to the next page. So there are generalized recountings of children being hidden with other families, the efforts of the Kabyle Ressistance (Berbers from Algeria) to smuggle Jews to safety, etc.. There are also a few specific examples of Salim Halali, a young Berber Jew from Algeria, two friends one a Muslim the other a Jew seeking shelter, a Tunisian Jew who stayed at the Mosque for over two years,and a few others, but with the exception of the use of the Grand Mosque and a Doctor Ahmed Somia very little flows throughout the book. Thus making it more of a historical account than a story.
Whether you have students or children that are naturally curious and have asked where they can find Allah or not, this book is engaging and fun and one the kids want read to them over and over again, alhumdulillah.
Islamic School Librarian 