This book resembles kindergarten and 1st grade leveled readers in both appearance (shape and size) and appeal. It very easily could have been a picture book, with its sparse words and simple linear story, but by making it a smaller size, with a variety of playful fonts, it really excites beginning readers who pick it up and are thrilled to see Muslim characters in an Islamic book on their level. The book is 32 pages and has nice large age appropriate pictures that work very well, even when reading the book aloud to small groups.
The story explores the concept of “finders keepers losers weepers” in a fulfilling way. Adam, a young boy on a train with his family, finds a toy train and desperately wants to keep it. His father kindly explains to him the two options before him and lets him choose. Adam, Alhumdulillah, chooses to give the train to the lost and found man and earn Allah’s reward. Later, Adam realizes after much searching and help from his family, that when he found the train, he left his toy airplane. The moral is cemented in the readers, as they too hope, with Adam, that whomever found his plane, also did the right thing and gave it to the lost and found. By coming full circle the message is conveyed, and a happy ending is had by all.
The book takes place in Britain and is book two in the Adam series.
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.
The illustrations are bright and colorful and have a lot going on. The expressions on the character’s faces compliment and complete the text seamlessly to tell a well thought out story. They keep the audience’s attention even after the text is read, with the kids telling me to “wait” so that they could soak it all in before I turned each page. The mom and teacher’s expressions on the last page amused the daycare through Kindergarten students and made them feel like they were in on the silliness.
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.
