Another standout in a crowded field of Ramadan picture books, mashaAllah, Lailah’s Lunchbox works well even outside of Ramadan for Muslim and Muslim children alike. In 32 pages, the reader gets to know Lailah and understand how hard it has been for her to move to America from Abu Dhabi, make new friends, how nerovus she is to be identified as different, as well as how excited she is that her mother has finally agreed to let her fast this Ramadan.
Lailah is excited to wake up and have sehri with her family before heading to her new school, fasting for the first time. Her mother has written a note for her teacher, but on the bus, Lailah reads the note and suddenly worries if her teacher will even know what Ramadan is ,and decides not to give it to her teacher. Lunchtime arrives, and when the teacher asks Lailah if she forgot her lunch, her voice fails her, and her classmates offer to share their lunch with her. Lailah decides to leave the cafeteria and finds herself in the library spilling all her worries and stresses and fears to a kind librarian. (Yes the librarian is the hero, and really no one should be surprised, right!?) With the librarian’s urging and Lailah’s determination, she writes a note to the teacher explaining that she is Muslim, and fasting, and even includes a poem. She leaves the note on her teacher’s desk at the end of the day. The following day, the teacher has written her back and the reader, along with Lailah, know that having courage and staying true to one’s self can often be scary, but also wonderful too.
While the story is billed a Ramadan Story, it really just is the back drop for a lot of really good messages. I think 2nd and 3rd graders to early middle schoolers could really benefit from the book. It is semi autobiographical and I think the authenticity of the emotion woven in, makes the book very relatable and powerful. I plan to discuss it with my daughter going in to 5th grade, who is also a bit shy on occasion: the way Lailah worked out the problem, the way she found someone to trust and talk to that was patient with her, to point out to her that the kids in her class were very kind and that most of her fear and anxiety was with herself, not them. I also really like the message that she was so excited to fast, and how her nerves took that excitement away, but having the courage to face her fear, brought back her happiness and enthusiasm.
The end of the book has an Author’s note, telling how the story came about and a bit more about Ramadan. It also tells the definition of Sehri and Iftar, the only two “foreign” words in the book. I found it interesting that the word Sehri, an Urdu word, was used instead of Suhoor, if they are coming from Abu Dhabi, but perhaps the author is of subcontinent heritage. The illustrations are colorful and realistic, complementing the story and tying in the range of emotions and events Lailah is experiencing.
I was pleasantly surprised at the book, and even more excited to see that it is available in the public library system. Here is the link to the author’s blog I hope she plans to write more, as her style and message resonate with Muslim American kids, and their parents, alhumdulillah.
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.
I was intrigued to see this book offered by Scholastic in the teen Reading Club Catalog as it sounded both action packed and cultural. The jacket cover summary was vague in describing the characters as being from an “unnamed Middle Eastern country,” but with the slightly veiled girl on front, I figured they probably are Muslim, and I should at the very least how they/we are being portrayed. The book is 295 pages long and that includes the story, the Author’s Note, and a Truth in Fiction section. The author is a former undercover CIA officer and the intense action, intertwined with cultural understandings, leave the reader second guessing and on the edge until the end. The AR level is 5.1, but with the profanity, sexual situations, and violence I would recommend the book to those in high school and up (15+).
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.
The real treat of the book however, is how it all comes together: the words, pictures, sentence structure, font, size, and diction all compliment each other on the same level. I read a lot of books aloud as a children’s librarian, and while the rhyming ones are great for the littlest listeners, there is often a void of read-out-loud stories for the kindergarten and first grade levels. And I am talking about all books, not just Islamic ones. Most picture books in my experience are written on a third grade level, with longer blocks of texts, smaller fonts, a wider range of vocabulary and longer sentences. These books are often beautiful and very tempting, however when I read them during story time I end up “summarizing” them, and telling the story rather than reading it. Similarly, early readers often find them frustrating and too difficult to read independently. Bismillah Soup strikes a wonderful balance, mashaAllah.
Islamic School Librarian 