Beautiful…

                                                           brilliant… 

 and full of baraka....

These three picture books about Ramadan have so much in common.

Sobhan Allah, I sat down multiple times with the intention to write individual reviews for these brand-new titles, but each time my attention got pulled away by more urgent endeavors. Now, Ramadan is in its final days and nights, the blessings of Allah within closer reach of the hearts that yearn for them. As masjids bustle with a special kind of energy that only exists once a year, it’s a great moment for reflection and collective care.

While each story is uniquely told, all three delve into Ramadan’s unique night-time atmosphere. A Ramadan Night and Ramadan for Everyone offer the jubilant, celebratory tone readers have likely come to expect of books about the holy month. Their main characters develop internal senses of Ramadan by participating in the evening prayers, called taraweeh. As masjids fill with worshipers, the overload of sensory details is both stimulating and sleep-inducing, the mood mesmerizing and whimsical. While Ramadan Rain shares in some of this sensory play, there is a deliberate sadness or vulnerability to the story that digs a little deeper into the heart. The main character wrestles with her desires, endeavouring to stay focused on what matters most while her hopes and wishes chase after beautiful things, not likely to come into her possession.

The illustrators of these three stories must have visualized the atmosphere of Ramadan nights in similar ways. Tones of blue, red, and yellow add decorative and folk-infused charm to the elegant stateliness of the Islamic spaces. The palette of Ramadan Rain is soft and gentle while A Ramadan Night and Ramadan for Everyone are bold and bright.

A Ramadan Night

It’s the first night of Ramadan and Sami’s father’s senses are attuned to the special atmosphere a Ramadan night carries. Sami wants to be just as attuned to the feeling of evening time during Ramadan and asks for an explanation, but his father keeps him guessing as they walk to the masjid to pray taraweeh. Bound to discover Ramadan nights for himself, Sami converses with the gleaming moon, bustling streets, echoes in the prayer hall, plush carpets, sweet scents, and food trucks, to learn about the unique atmosphere and allow it to settle into his senses.

Nostalgic and energetic, with images that invoke Van Gogh’s starry, starry night, this story awakens the senses to a special time of year.

Ramadan for Everyone

It’s Ramadan, but being a little one in the family, Habeeba still does not have the stamina to fast all day or stay awake at night during taraweeh. She tries and fails, tries and fails to achieve her intentions. Scents from the kitchen, where her father is cooking, break her resolve to fast until sunset. Sounds in the masjid and the comfort of the soft carpets overwhelm her desire to keep her eyes open. A little frustrated at herself, but mostly willing to take it in stride, Habeeba hopes she can still make her Ramadan count by helping others in the community.

Colorful, cozy, and complete. Offers fun ideas for kids to do during school lunch times and taraweeh.

Ramadan Rain

For a young girl named Haneen, Ramadan is off to a slow, damp start. She used to get to the masjid faster, but now that they don’t have a car, she and her mother must take the bus on a rainy Ramadan night. When she arrives at the masjid, Haneen is wet and her boots are muddy. Everyone else has dry, clean shoes, presumably because they were able to come by car. As Haneen settles in and observes others, more and more desires accumulate in her heart, while her most important longings gets pushed to the back of her mind, not finding expression in the drawing Haneen is making about everything she wants for Eid. When her mother realizes that she will not be able to provide Haneen’s wishes, she tries to hide her sadness and offer the best of what she has.

By now, Haneen has recalled the most important hope that she had neglected to pray for when she was distracted by others things. A new drawing reveals what she values over everything—her mother.

A poignant reminder to keep the heart focused on things that truly matter, so they will not be forgotten in prayer.

This delightful tale, set during Ramadan, has a lot of underlying humour that flips to the top if you’ve had the good fortune of being part of a Palestinian family. Cooking at the bottom of the plot is Teta’s psychological angst over a growing list of ingredients. As a quintessential Palestinian grandmother, she has oodles of patience for the time and effort that will go into making this beloved dish for the family, but Teta’s persistent “Inshallah” carries the subtlety of a purist’s side-eye against too many innovations. Teta is trying not to faint, her grief not caused by age or medicine. Her granddaughter Malak’s excitement seems to be the only thing keeping Teta on her feet.

As the author, Maysa Odeh, mentions in the back-matter of the story, some purists “consider it a travesty to incorporate more than one vegetable.” Backmatter also includes a recipe, cooking instructions, and suggestions for garnishes.

Illustrations are as warm and inviting as this family-oriented story of a beloved Palestinian dish. Rich in decorative detail, like a hand-sewn tatreez garment, Nadine Issa stitches together the colours, textures, and patterns that embody Palestinian love for home and family. Wherever readers cast their eyes, there is beauty and adornment, richness and warmth that naturally coalesce when hands and minds are guided by the heart.

A perfect blend of artwork and storytelling, sure to top bookseller lists during Ramadan.

Maqlouba is one of the first Palestinian dishes I ever tried to make. I was twenty-four years old and barely capable of cooking an egg. You can imagine the result. At the time, you could hardly find any recipes in English on the internet. I resorted to YouTube. The “chef” recommended fried ground beef, carrots, and peas, which is more similar to ouzi than maqlouba, but I trusted them. I can still recall the look on my husband’s face when he viewed that enormous catastrophe meant to be eaten by only the two of us that night in Jordan. He ate two bites at most then suggested we head to the city center for argela. He ate well at the restaurant, lol.

If you’ve ever flipped a pot of maqlouba before, you’ll know the angst that goes into it, especially if you’re the cook. If you didn’t put enough water, the ingredients at the bottom might be burnt or the rice might be dry and hard. If you put too much liquid, the rice might be mushy like pudding.

If you’re adding too many vegetables and meat, like I usually do, you’ll need a lot of liquid to cover the rice, so you’ll want a grain that can hold up. The other day, I made maqlouba (it’s still the dish I’m least skillful at making…I can make almost everything else decently) and realized I only had chicken and carrots to go with the rice. It ended up being my best attempt to date, but the purists will surely not believe me.

More reviews for Ramadan on the way, inshallah….

In anticipation of the release of My Language Is a Garden on February 17th (the first day of Ramadan), I went out searching for a fact book about languages that I could take along with me on school visits and readings. Lucky for me, Lucky’s Books and Comics on Main Street had a copy of this recently published atlas of languages, whose beautiful illustrations of living languages pairs so perfectly with the theme and artwork of my own title.

The atlas begins with a general overview of languages around the world, with an explanation of how European languages spread worldwide through colonization, which in turn led to the erasure of Indigenous languages from the land. Today, there are at least 7,100 languages, “but perhaps as many as 8,500.”

I was already aware that approximately half of these are expected to be extinct by the turn of the next century, but I was not aware that “95 percent of all languages are spoken by only 3 percent of the world’s population.” It puts into perspective just how much heritage we stand to lose in a just a few decades.

The Atlas of Languages is organized by continents and language trees, with Africa represented first. Countries are marked in tiny capital font whereas languages are written in variety of large and medium font sizes, with only the first letter capitalized. With some focus and attention, a reader’s eyes adjust to the crowded, vibrant map of ecological and cultural life throughout the continent. Arabic is given the most space, textually, as it is generally considered to be the language with the most speakers in Africa. Fulfulde, Swahili, Amharic, Oromo, and Somali are also prominent.

Fun facts to learn from this section:

• Nigeria is home to over 500 different languages.

• With around 1400 languages, the Atlantic-Congo language tree is the biggest in the world by number of languages, and the most-spoken Indigenous African languages all belong to this family.

After Africa, the book moves on to Europe then Asia and Oceania. It’s important to note that continents have other names in other languages and that industrial systems prioritize European understandings of lands and waters.

I wish the book had sourced a list of alternative names for the continents from the languages that live within the land. Many would probably conceptualize the lines of the land much differently, or even not have a concept of borders, which is why colonial institutions and literature prefer only to mention those names for geography that stem from European discourse. I appreciate that the atlas includes the name Palestine, when referring to the area of western Asia in which Arabic is spoken, but Israel is mentioned first in an apparent effort to placate all understandings of the region.

Due to its willingness to grant legitimacy to a violent, apartheid settler regime, especially after this regime created the worst invention in human culture—a live-streamed genocide—the book’s team does not get a full five stars from me.

The matter of lands and the industrial apartheid system the English language enforces on them around the globe, ruins most efforts to learn about human heritage. There is a system of violence in place to make sure some place names stay and others are erased. Languages and ecosystems are dying because of industrial apartheid systems, which are policed by the military industrial complex, but this reality is never mentioned in books like these. In order to preserve all the heritage now archived within the pages (as if writing things down were enough to keep people alive), the military industrial complex will have to be dismantled as a first, not final, step toward preserving life on this planet.

Institutional languages currently have the greatest chance of survival or generational success, but since the institutions which utilize these languages do not stand behind their principles with responsible action (for example they do not stop the production, sale, and transfer of weapons to genocidal states and tyrants) their languages are now suffering moral failures which will lead to cultural, political, and environmental disasters. So its anyone’s guess which languages will survive the ruinous future being built by industrial mercenaries around the world who are in service of the Empire of the Machine, which has become the primary cultural heritage of European colonizers.

Please, please, please put your efforts of language preservation in your children and nature, not nuclear-armed states, surveillance technology, and ragged politicians.

Despite not mentioning the major threats facing languages and human survival today, this atlas offers much reason to cherish the lands and people that have existed throughout time. Here is a random collection of facts that I found interesting.

• The island of New Guinea alone is home to as many as a thousand languages. (pg.65)

• In 2002, the president of Turkmenistan decided to rename all the months of the year, naming January after himself. Two years after he died, the old names were restored. This goes to show that language changes don’t always work. (pg. 61)

• Sanskrit is a sacred language in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. It is still used daily by a few thousand people in India, mostly for religious purposes. (pg. 58)

• The only other living languages in the Japonic language family are eleven languages that are spoken on the Ryukyu Islands, which are all in great danger of dying out. (pg. 54)

• Malta is the only country in the European Union that has a language from the Afro-Asiatic language family as its main language. (pg. 37)

• Hawaiian is the language of the Indigenous people of Hawai’i. It has 13 letters: A, E, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, U, W, and the ‘okina. The ‘okina is pronounced like the pause that you hear in the middle of “uh-oh.” (pg. 67)

• The Khmer language has the largest alphabet in the world, with a total of 74 letters. It is spoken in Cambodia. (pg. 48)

• Mandarin is the biggest language in the world by number of people who speak it as their native language (1.4 billion speakers). Around 200 million people speak it as a second language. It is spoken in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. (pg. 52)

• Quechua was the language of the Inca Empire, and around 35 great-great-great-great-grandchildren of the language are still spoken to this day. (pg. 85)

And here is a very short list of other recent books that feature a language or cultural history.

I was disappointed that hardly any of the Indigenous languages of the Pacific Northwest were represented in the atlas, but Kim Spencer has a picture book coming out that features some words in Sm’algya̱x, so I will preorder a copy of Springtime in Kitkatla as a first step in filling in the gaps.

Amire Hoxha’s Amar’s Fajr Reward offers a few words in Albanian. Hoxha is originally from Kosovo. “The lack of representation of Muslim Kosovars in the Muslim kid-lit space pushed her to write her first book.”

Some facts I learned about Albanian from the atlas….

“Because it is not closely related to any of the other Indo-European languages, the Albanian language has a whole branch to itself. Spoken in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Montenegro. 7 million speakers.” (pg. 36)

M.O. Yuksel explores Uzbek heritage in The Prince of Stars. Ulugh Beg, “the great prince” spoke Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Chagatai Turkic, Mongolian, and Chinese! This picture book tells the story of the prince’s scientific interest in the stars and the building of the Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand in 1424.

Facts about Uzbek from the atlas…

“Spoken in Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan. 31 million speakers. Kichkina demang bizni, ko’tarib uramiz sizni is a useful rhyming phrase if you’re a young Uzbek speaker. It means you should never underestimate kids (literally, “Don’t call us small, we will win”).”

I’d like to end with some good news to share. My Language Is a Garden received a starred review from Booklist!

If you feel inspired, please preorder a copy of my book before its release. Copies have recently come off the press and shipments will begin soon. This book is designed to encourage children of any language to plant the seeds of their heritage in the world.

Many thanks to First Person Press, a nonfiction imprint of Sambasivan & Parikh, for an advanced reading copy of the imprint’s first publication, Diaspora-ish: notes on Identities, Unbelonging, & Solidarities, set for release on February 3rd, 2026.

Written by educator Gayatri Sethi, Diaspora-ish “draws upon [the author’s] complex diasporic journey to explore widely accepted ideas about identity and belonging.”

What does it mean to be in diaspora? How do our identities and aspirations for belonging unfold during times of collective upheaval?

Allow your imagination to linger on the idea of collective upheaval for just a moment. Perhaps some words or images come to mind, facts and opinions, points of view. Alternatively, you may experience mind blankness. Your breath sharpens. A familiar pulsing headache returns. An entanglement of previous histories, traumatic upheavals of empire, may wriggle inside, desiring or not desiring to be spoken. Perhaps survival is your ability to grasp on to something. Perhaps it is your capacity to let go. Identity expands and contracts, navigating the instability.

Narratives born out of collective upheaval are often labelled or categorized as “diaspora narratives.” The -ish in this particular book wiggles under border fences, smudges the lines of division, and refuses to march lock-step with imperial categorizations of humanity.

Despite some heavy themes, Diaspora-ish is an effortless read thanks to author’s careful attention to flow and structure. Concepts move in fluid, intimate verse, with pauses for learning and reflection that become more expansive as the narrative weaves on. Nearly a memoir in free verse, the work explores three areas of identity in which the author has felt both affinity and estrangement. In the vastness of her experience, Sethi is desi-ish, African-ish, American-ish. The triumph of belonging to any one identity, Sethi casts aside. To belong within a global apartheid system is to accept deceptions about oneself and others, to choose service to empire over equality and dignity.

In this way, Diaspora-ish reminds me of an uncoventional form of storytelling, more intimate and anguished than any other and the last remnant of oral history in human societies—the birth narrative. Sure, some names, dates, and procedures may be jotted down, placed within a medical file, and stored away somewhere, but for the rest of its existence, the story of a delivery, independent of onlookers and observers, is one of the most humble stories you will ever hear. It’s telling is almost always oral, sporadic, and precarious. There is no triumph or glory. The pain, the labour, the vulnerability of existence, the inability to ever be fully ready for the experience, the enormous upheaval in the life of the person delivering the child, and the humility of being unable to escape or control the outcome engenders a story that defies encapsulation. It is too great, too miserable, too outside the dimensions of self to be described in the language of personal triumph. It is beyond ourselves.

Forgive me if it’s a digression to note that stories of war, of death, of the taking of life instead of its delivery, are of the most triumphant stories available. The wiggling little -ish in Sethi’s diasporic observations settles in the subconscious as an instinct of suspicion against triumphant narratives of belonging. Whose oppression was or is necessary for that triumph to be obtained and maintained?

Of the three main sections in this work, African-ish stands out, likely because it holds the greatest abundance of life (land, sky, plants, people, foods, etc.). It’s where I began to place many small folds on the corner of pages.

Here is the first page I marked.

African-ish geographies

Geographies can change over time and with politics.

The origin story of today’s African geography is colonial even though the history of Africa neither begins nor ends with colonialism.

What was decided about Africa at the Berlin Conference in 1885? Did any Africans have a say or attend?

What is the ongoing legacy of Europeans cooperating on how to divide and conquer

Africa?

Whose arbitrary borders still carve up Africa into 54 nations even

after supposed

postcolonial independence?

Do we inquire how or why the vast continent is often treated with singularity?

to be African-ish is to unlearn colonial geographies. 81

I could say a lot more about the numerous connections and insights one can discover in this five-star book. Its theme is one that can get everyone talking about their own family histories. As I read, I found myself continually thinking of people I know who would find solace in the words. Preorder a copy now and follow for more information.

I’m delighted to return to Kinder Books on February 22nd to celebrate the launch of my latest picture book, My Language Is a Garden. Spring will already be in the air as we share our favourite flowers and the words that make us happy and connected to each other.

Register here.

About the book…

Do you know my language? Have you heard the sounds it makes? Has it rocked you in its rhythms? Have you seen the roads it takes?

A parent invites a child to get to know their language. In a driving rhythm, they speak about the language blossoming in deserts and plains, building castles and forts and motoring over roadways. Not hemmed in by borders, this language holds ancient knowledge, medicines and nourishment within it, and has explored the farthest reaches of the universe. The parent realizes that teaching their heritage language to their child will connect them always and allow them to grow a garden of language together.

For the parents and caregivers who want to share their heritage language with the children in their lives, E.G. Alaraj has crafted this celebratory and inspiring poem in hopes it will get more conversations started and encourage kids to see the joy in discovering their roots. Exploring the links between language, culture and the natural world, this book is a heartfelt celebration of the vitality and importance of our languages and how they bind us together.

Reviews

“Alaraj’s text makes for an effortless read-aloud as she speaks to the power of language. With kaleidoscopic colors and dramatic shifts in perspective, Wada’s majestic visuals depict the characters traversing cities, mountains, the seaside, and even space. A lyrical ballad of a book that celebrates the gift of language.”—Kirkus

“A beautiful lyrical book showing the power language has in connection to heritage, family, to culture, and others...will draw listeners in and hopefully inspire them to lean into the language around them, and appreciate the many doors it can open.”—Islamic School Librarian

Learn more about the inspiration behind the book here.

Help me create a buzz around this book by preordering a copy, requesting it at your civic and school libraries, and sharing it with friends and family members.

Thank you for your support!

Learn the inspiration behind my forthcoming picture book as well as some useful tips for developing multilingual families in a fragile world.

No surprises here. I was one of the jurors!

I signed up last year. The opportunity was a perk of having been a finalist of the prizes. Two big boxes of books arrived at my doorstep in December, hand-delivered thanks to the postal strike. Over the holiday, my kids and I delved into more than fifty illustrated fiction and nonfiction titles. A juror was to choose only five, with the first automatically becoming a finalist for the prizes. Most of the books I chose ended up making the shortlist, which means other jurors had coincidentally preferred the same books.

If you’ve read my bedtime lullaby When Stars Arise or an advanced copy of My Language Is a Garden, you can probably guess my top pick. But by summer, when we were to choose the winner, I’d become very indecisive. I could easily imagine any of the five being chosen as the best of the best. Who doesn’t love Brady Sato’s soft nostalgic colours and ethereal lighting? Who could turn down Mei Yu’s puppy-eyed character arriving to Vancouver from China? Who could not marvel at Desiree Dumont’s detailed pointillism? In keeping with my five-star tendencies, I wanted each of the five titles to be a star.

But after a round of deliberation, A Face Is A Poem won the approval of all jurors. Here’s the description we wrote:

“A Face Is a Poem is an inquisitive glance at the familiar and unusual landscapes of faces. Wonderous questions cast myriad reflections upon all kinds of near-and-dear faces, increasing our attentiveness to what makes each one unique. Morstad’s charming illustration style, inclusive of monochrome line drawing, watercolour, collage, hand-lettering and graphic elements, her careful attention to detail, her use of visual variety, and her talent for composition all support the kaleidoscope of ideas that makes this work remarkable. As faces are of the first landscapes children explore, this book offers multiple points of connection and discovery for families.”

The first couple times I read Morstad’s book, my enjoyment was mostly constrained to its concepts and humour. The narrative switches perspective a lot, and you get the sense the author/illustrator was just having fun brainstorming or associating different concepts. But as my fellow jurors and I pieced together our statement, the intimacy of the book became strikingly apparent. Of course! Isn’t this how faces look in the eyes of a baby as they reach up to their loved ones for affection and stimulation? When they have yet to crawl or walk, isn’t the face of a loved one their whole world? And what if that face never smiles???!!! Oh my goodness. Please smile at your babies, people. First impressions are important!

But you may be wondering which book my kids liked the most, and so, I give you the winner of the 2025 Alaraj Junior Juror category:

They laughed on every page. They related to all the character’s circumstances because feeling shame and embarrassment at school is the domain of all children, whether they are new to a country or not. The narrative was so well paced, full of ups and downs and funny asides, but the author/illustrator’s message was important, as well. It relates to Mei Yu’s experience immigrating as a young child to Vancouver. Her difficulties learning the language were solved by her talent to draw pictures and her love of libraries. Through art and storytelling, Mei Yu solved the alienation she felt when learning a new language in a new country. Now, through her YouTube channel and instructional drawing books, she’s teaching a whole new generation the gift of finding your art and soul.

The theme of Mei Yu’s book and life story connects with Leila Boukarim’s, Rima and the Painter, which released this year. Also part memoir, Leila’s story recalls the influence Bob Ross, a television personality and painter, had on her during her first years in Canada. Ross’s soothing voice and stunning artwork were a source of connection in an isolating new country. Drawing inspiration from his gift, Rima (Boukarim’s character) begins to develop her own talents, which encourages her mother to put aside homesickness and join in the fun of creativity. Together they build a new sense of place and belonging.

If you meet Leila today, you’ll see she’s still hard at work solving problems with art and soul. Check out www.coastallinespress.com to learn about the fundraising initiative she founded with a collective of talented writers from Gaza. Through Zines from Gaza, the collective publishes independent booklets of poetry, essays, and testimonies that travel like tiny vessels from coast to coast, carrying stories of survival, resistance, and hope.

Proceeds from every zine directly fund essential supplies for families under siege.
Their name, Coastal Lines Press, honors the Mediterranean Sea, which anchors life in the region, and celebrates the “lines” of language - words, sentences, prose, and poems - that connect writers to readers worldwide.

Look for this logo online: @zinesfromgaza (insta) @coastallinespress.com (bluesky)

What are you devoting your “art and soul” to these days?

(Edits may occur after publication.)

Subscribe now

📢 Cover Reveal & Pre-order Launch

Diaspora-ish: Notes on Identities, Unbelonging, & Solidarities

I am excited to support Gayatri Sethi (@desibookaunty) and partner with @1stPersonPress @Sambasivanandparikh for the cover reveal of @diasporaishbook.

In an extension of her genre-bending nonfiction debut Unbelonging, Sethi juxtaposes personal observations with academic notes and inquiries to guide readers through paradigm shifts in learning. Diaspora-ish presents an anti-imperial, anti-racist, collective learning resource that centers historically marginalized and excluded global realities.

Releasing on February 3rd, 2026, Diaspora-ish: Notes on Identities, Unbelonging, & Solidarities is a collective learning resource that offers inquiries about diasporic identity and belonging aimed at practicing global solidarity.

In addition to being a radical academic, Gayatri Sethi is a beloved community leader for decolonization in the publishing industry and academia. She is one of those rare individuals that puts her intellect into practice in the real world, showing solidarity and commitment to communities plundered by empire.

Please considering supporting Diaspora-ish by pre-ordering at www.SambasivanAndParikh.com and wherever books are sold. Order directly from the small press for 25% off.

#teachersfollowteachers #bookrec #universitybooks #nonfictionbooks #booksforeducation #individualhistories #diasporaishbook

Letters for Palestinian Childhoods

An online and in-person travelling exhibition of letters, poems, and artwork dedicated to the children of Palestine.

L4PC aims to counter dehumanising narratives about Palestinians, showing solidarity by attending to the names, stories, experiences, dreams, and struggles of Palestinian children and the actions of the Western-backed Israeli state which are so violently shaping their lives.

https://reimaginingchildhoodstudies.com/letters-for-palestinian-childhoods/

Love Notes for Hind Rajab

Every day I send my 5-year-old son to Kindergarten with a “love note” in his lunchbox —

A small drawing of a plant or animal with “love you” written underneath.

Since your murder, Hind, I have been drawing a love note for you each day

with the beautiful flora and fauna of Palestine.

My love notes to you — a promise to your mother to not forget you, a moment of beauty to honor you,

a moment of mourning for every Palestinian child who deserves every beautiful thing.

Your own family sent you into the world with such tokens, I am certain of it.

When you travelled to school or left home on an outing to the store, the way so many loving families do.

A carefully wrapped snack, a kiss on the forehead, a note, words of encouragement, prayers for safety,

a hand smoothing your dark hair into place.

Did you love all creatures, the same way my son does, the way so many young children do?

Did you delight in plucking the flowers that grew along the alleyway or finding mushrooms growing under a rotting log?

I wonder if your elders marveled at your young eyes when you alone were able to find

the tiniest butterfly camouflaged among the flowers.

There is so much beauty and wonder in this world.

I will keep drawing for you, Hind, until all Palestinian children are free to behold it.

Casey Y. Myers, Watershed Community School (USA)

رسائلُ محبة إلى هند رجب

كل يوم أقوم بإرسال ابني البالغ من العمر ٥ سنوات إلى روضته ومعه “رسالة محبة” في صندوق غذاءه ــــ
رسمة صغيرة لنبات أو حيوان مكتوبٌ عليها “أحبك”.

فمنذ مقتلك يا هند وأنا أرسم لك رسالة محبة كل يوم

مع النباتات والحيوانات الجميلة في فلسطين.

رسائل محبتي لكِ ـــ وعداً لأمك بألاّ أنساكِ، لحظة جمال لتكريم ذكراكِ،

لحظة حداد على كل طفل فلسطيني يستحق كل شيء جميل.

لقد أرسلتك عائلتك إلى العالم بمثل هذه الرموز والإشارات، فأنا متأكدة من ذلك.

عندما كنتِ تذهبين إلى المدرسة أو تغادرين المنزل في نزهة إلى المتجر، كما تفعل العديد من العائلات الكريمة.

وجبةً خفيفة ملفوفة بعناية، أو قبلةً على الجبين، أو ملاحظة، أو كلماتُ تشجيع، أو دعاء بالسلامة، أو يداً تلامس وترتب شعرك الداكن في مكانه.

لقد أحببتِ جميع المخلوقات بنفس الطريقة التي يحبها ابني، تماماً كما يفعل الكثير من الأطفال الصغار؟

هل استمتعتِ بقطف الزهور التي نمت على طول الزقاق؟ أو بالعثور على فطر ينمو تحت جذع شجرة متعفن؟

أتساءل كثيراً عما إذا كان كبار السن في عائلتك قد تعجبوا من عيونك الصغيرة عندما كنتِ وحدك قادرة على إيجاد أصغر فراشة مموهةً بين الزهور.

هناك الكثير من الجمال والعجائب في هذا العالم.

سأواصل الرسم من أجلك يا هند، حتى يصبح جميع الأطفال الفلسطينيين أحراراً ليروه.

كيسي مايرز، مدرسة ووترشيد المجتمعية، الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية

English > Arabic translation: Maha Mehanna, PhD candidate from Gaza City, Palestine

I do not consent to AI training on any material published here.

Also, make a recording in case the interview is removed from the net.

One of the best local bookstores in my area is a shop called Nooroongji. There you can find books in multiple languages, including picture books whose original texts are written in Arabic, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, for example. It’s a good thing this shop doesn’t have comfy seating. If it did, I’d spend hours discovering words in Nooroongji’s large selection of picture dictionaries. Nooroongji is the English transliteration of a Korean word for the crunchy, scorched rice found at the bottom of the pot. It’s a beloved treat in many cultures and a great name for a bookstore that’s all about sharing languages and cultures.

Multilingual friendships and families build bridges between languages. Between worlds. Their connections inspire and transform society. But stepping outside one’s heritage, or having multiple heritages, can also divide people from a sense of place and belonging. This is especially true of children, whose abundance of mirror neurons are constantly busy connecting the dots between self and the world. Without familiarity of place and voice, children may lose touch, become fragmented and unsettled. Building an integrated personality from a complex network of locations and languages requires enormous effort and deep self-reflection. The resulting concept of home is broader than land. Vast and uncontained, it is more like the ocean or sky, uneasy to settle except by imagination.

Between Words: A Friendship Tale by Saki Tanaka tells the story of Kai, a boy that follows the seasons with his Pa. They move from windy plains, to lapping lakes, and dusty villages, never staying long. At every temporary campsite, Kai builds a tower with nearby rocks before placing his own special rock on top. The stones in the tower become symbolic of things Kai wishes he had. “Words. Friends. Home.” When it is time to leave, the special rock, speckled with stars, goes with Kai while the others remain scattered behind.

Village by village, Kai’s isolation grows. Other children do not understand his language and sometimes run away. In a moment of frustration, Kai loses his speckled stone in a pool of water, forcing him to dive in and retrieve it. Under water, a whole new world presents itself. Occupied by a merfriend and a helpful school of fish, the watery underworld symbolizes a realm of imagination or place of self discovery. A span of seven wordless spreads shows Kai collecting rocks and building a large tower with the merfriend and fish. When it is finished, his speckled stone is placed on top and Kai returns to land. The sense of belonging he carries back immediately translates into a smile, which happens to work just as well as words when making new friends.

An author’s note at the end of the story explains how the author-illustrator drew from personal childhood experiences. Half Japanese, half Mexican, Saki Tanaka grew up between words and worlds. She often felt isolated and out of place, but recalls the many times she was “saved by a smile or wave that wordlessly” spoke of belonging. She writes:

“‘Kai’ means ‘ocean’ in Japanese. The name carries my hope that, like this large body of water, what separates us can also connect us. I’m heartened by kind gestures that build these bridges across all sorts of barriers and borders.”

Tanaka’s message reminds me of Nooroongji and its efforts to build bridges between worlds in the heart of a multilingual city. It also reminds me of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s newly released Theory of Water. An engaging and informative read, Theory of Water offers a water-driven, rather than land-based, decolonization thesis. Personal narratives that exist in a global context without connection to land are like a rising tide, flooding world languages. Wordless forms of communication may serve as flotation devices for a time, but with so many fascists patrolling the seas with their gunboats and surveilling the sky with their satellites and drones, a larger vocabulary of connection will have to surface. Unfortunately, this will increase dependencies on industrial communication services like social media and AI, which have been designed to trap or barricade our attention.

If there’s one point to be drawn, it is that we need to be more adventurous in our capacities for self-reflection and meaning making.

Growing up, Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie were essential reading for girls in the Pacific Northwest. These series were to shape our perceptions of childhood, our inner goals and development, and our relationships to environment (society/town/nature). But apart from some beautiful descriptive phrases in English, these series lacked more than they offered. Half the content was unfamiliar or not relevant, but we gleaned some small sense of ourselves in the spirit of the land or characters. If we exercised our imaginations like Anne, we could make-believe ourselves into being, in the same way industrialism could make-believe a country out of a colony.

Now, after more than a century of existing off pretenses and heroism, the girls of the Americas have been gifted a heartwarming, down-to-earth character, whose Tsimshian charm and familiarity hugs everything inside you and makes you just want to be you and nothing but you so help you God (or Grandma).

Amelia (Mia) has integrity, but not the moralistic, holier-than-thou, pretentious kind. It’s the kind of integrity built from having a family you love, a strong person that looks out for you, a place you can call home, and a culture that surrounds you. Anne had to get familiar with her environment and become someone among strangers. With Mia, the familiarity is built in and reading about her is like being welcomed in to someone’s home and receiving a hug and big plate of food, even though you’re a stranger. You immediately recognize the air of honest hospitality, and if you happen to be from the Pacific Northwest, you recognize so much more.

Never-ending rain. Check.

Oceans. Check.

Salmon. Check.

Wildlife. Check.

Feral childhood, hanging around on docks. Check.

Evangelists and television shows. Check. Check.

Greyhound buses, eighteen-hour journeys, cramped car rides to Vancouver, boring programs on CBC radio. Check, check, check, check.

What wasn’t familiar, I really enjoyed learning about, like Tsimshian ceremonies and beliefs regarding death and grief, their Sm’algyax language, and how to prepare certain foods.

Some Sm’algyax words from the book: ya’as=grandfather, dzi’is=grandmother, asgyaabax=chatterbox, dzoox=shy. Vocabulary is introduced in a really smooth way, keeping you within the flow of the story. Kim Spencer is a master at pacing for Middle Grade readers. Past, present, and future flow well into one stream.

Although the novel deals with difficult themes, like the death of Mia’s grandmother, the book isn’t sad. Comic relief sweeps in when topics get too heavy. Even in the saddest parts of the story, there were moments that the author had me laughing out loud in some recognition of my own grandmother or family members. Like when Mia recalls things she’ll miss about her grandmother and among all the tender, vulnerable things, she mentions “arguing over the expensive toilet paper or the no-name brand.” Or when Mia compares her bike accident to a yard sale in the middle of the road. Comedy consistently relieves the pressure for young readers, offering them a set of instincts for how to deal with challenges.

The book’s closing reflections on grief are structured on the weight of everything Mia’s grandmother does for her and the family before sickness and passing. Although she’s in her 70s and a survivor of colonial griefs and agonies, Mia’s grandmother is always working, serving, laughing, talking, providing, and travelling.

“Native people’s lives are different from the lives of non-Natives. Our reality is much more challenging. Painful. We have to be physically and emotionally stronger. We can’t let things get to us. I don’t know why it is this way. But it is. We are expected to walk through life like some kind of wonder woman.”

I Won’t Feel This Way Forever is a serial of Weird Rules to Follow, which focuses on Mia’s childhood bestfriend, Lara, and the cultural rules surrounding race that drive a wedge between them. With the second book being mostly about Amelia’s grandmother, some readers may wonder what connects these two books in theme. I think the loss of a bestfriend in book one is superseded by the loss of a beloved family member in book two. One loss replaces the other, leading the main character to important realizations about who she is and whom she should allow to take space in her heart.

“After losing Grandma, nothing matters. Lara is nobody to me. Same as her friends. Fake, fleeting people don’t matter. Ashamed? For what? Who cares what they think? Who the hell are they?”

The brevity of each novel leaves you wanting more. Having developed a stronger sense of self, will Mia gain the courage to join the basketball team and outshine Lara and her obnoxious new friends? Will we get some front row tickets to Prince Rupert’s indigenous basketball scene? I hope Kim Spencer and Orca Book Publishers will continue this series, offering Middle Grade readers a down-to-earth, resilient female character, who is definitely the cool girl next door by virtue of being true to herself.

Further learning:

On the topic of indigenous superheroes and colonial violence, please pick up a copy of Mohammed Al Kurd’s Perfect Victims. The genocide of Palestinians has produced ever-more-impossible emotional standards for human beings to live up to when confronted with full-scale multinational industrial assaults on their populations. This point was roughly sketched into an original version of this review as I considered the “wonder woman” qualities of Mia’s indigenous grandmother. I’ve moved the connection here for specificity and also link to his important work.

https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2499-perfect-victims

Learn Sm’algyax vocabulary and pronunciation here:

https://www.smalgyax.ca/sound-files

First of all, allow me to congratulate for the release of Zarina Divided, which was published by Harper Collins in March of this year (2025). It is a timely narrative written in verse for children, aged 8-12 years. Shortly after the book’s publication, in May to be exact, the legacy of apartheid between Pakistan and India once again reared its ugly head in a volley of missiles. It was also in March that the Apartheid Entity in historic Palestine intensified its use of starvation as a weapon against civilians in Gaza. In May, it advanced this weaponry of starvation by replacing international aid agencies with militant industrial mercenaries.

In simple terms, the colonial infrastructure of the former British Empire, its forced marriages and divorces, is all coming apart in the same violent fashion that it was constructed together/apart. It did not hold. It will not hold. And our children will continue to pick up the pieces, if any remain.

Apartheid is disintegrating and to keep it from falling apart, stronger and more brutal forms of apartheid are given global application, compartmentalizing or warehousing humanity into smaller and smaller zones of life. Perhaps this explains the author’s use of verse to relay the shattering of her grandmother’s world in 1947. One attempts to comprehend the whole through the assemblage of small verses.

Kirkus described Zarina Divided as “an ambitious attempt to render sweeping changes in the birth of a nation that doesn’t coalesce.” I had to read the description a few times, wondering if the reviewer was speaking of the nation not coalescing or the novel. How can the story coalesce when the legacy of apartheid continues to devour history instead of supporting it? Rather than draw lines and take sides between people, the author attempted a careful journey through the history of partition and its legacies of compartmentalization in thought and reality.

Zarina Divided is composed of four sections, which are classified by date and geography. Its main character is a fictional representation of the author’s grandmother, whose father (the author’s great grandfather) was influential in the founding of Pakistan. Throughout the narrative, the main character exercises and resists her urges to compartmentalize the social and geographical upheavals that take place. The author examines these impulses rather than encouraging one over the other. When so many divisions have already taken place, further dividing might beg some hesitancy, or so the narrative seems to suggest.

“When there’s space in your heart, there’s space to accommodate.”

But what if the political system you live in is designed to squeeze the space out of your heart? After partition, what remains of the heart and its generous chambers?

I hope young readers will pick up on the cult vibes, emanating from the white teachers at Zarina’s boarding school. With carefully crafted scripts for everything, they come across as open-minded, caring teachers, but the school is a monocultured replica of British life on lands that have long been diverse. Before partition, how many languages were spoken? How many religions were practiced? How many cuisines were mixed? All to be replaced by a mixed group of people eating porridge and speaking English!!! ya Allah.

Meanwhile, at the same period of time in the Americas, boarding schools were “residential schools,” designed to murder any indigenous soul that stepped inside.

Since I am not a revolutionary intellectual, allow me to close with the words of someone who was.

“A world compartmentalized, Manichaean and petrified, a world of statues: the statue of the general who led the conquest, the statue of the engineer who built the bridge. A world cocksure of itself, crushing with its stoniness the backbones of those scarred by the whip. That is the colonial world. The colonial subject is a man penned in; apartheid is but one method of compartmentalizing the colonial world. The first thing the colonial subject learns is to remain in his place and not overstep the limits.” —Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of The Earth.

To summarize, Zarina Divided invites the inheritors of colonial partition to understand the physical, intellectual, and emotional barriers that were set in place by partition and which now inhibit communal coalescence.

This picture book is beautiful. There’s no other way to describe it. And as with all beautiful things, its presence lingers in heart and mind. The narrative and illustrations form an inhabitance, a dwelling, that invites and welcomes readers. This is home. This is Damascus—the City of Jasmine—the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Its sights, scents, sounds, suburbs, landmarks, and people come to life as pages turn. And just when you feel you are truly there, the narrative pulls you elsewhere. In an instant, all that remains are the memories, lingering beautiful moments, and the imagined scent of jasmine.

I liked the metaphorical connection between the Damascene box and the book itself. Within the pages, beneath the lid, one finds cherished pieces of a city that has stood and still stands against the test of time. May its beauty be protected from evil and envy.

The City of Jasmine is a debut picture book by Nadine Presley. Her elegant, poetic style pairs so beautifully with Heather Brockman Lee’s watercolor illustrations. Bits of collage add visual depth and texture, providing a three-dimensional experience of the architecture and landscape. Brilliantly composed.

This spring saw the release of two new picture books by Leila Boukarim. Both are set in Lebanon. Both characters have aspirations involving food. Both seek a deeper sense of place and belonging. Given the similarities, I hoped to review both picture books with the same breath, but I found I could not.

Between these two narratives, there are many differences. One is fiction. The other is creative nonfiction. One character visits Lebanon freely every summer. The other is trapped in a human warehousing system, also known as a refugee camp. One belongs to a world in which children have rights and freedoms. The other exists without rights and freedoms, a “daughter of refugees—people who live between worlds.”

It is likely that these books were written before 2023, the year the political architecture of the former British Empire began to rattle and shake and crumble with a violent fragility not seen since WWII. The Anglosphere suffered an immediate moral defeat. Its political, educational, commercial, medical and spiritual institutions offered no resistance to senseless massacres of men, women, and children. And worse, English cultural institutions did everything possible to provide the weapons and the cover. Live-streamed genocide is now our primary cultural production.

While the Anglosphere persists with its killing spree, it feels wrong to write and review children’s books written in English. Is this a language and culture to which we should encourage children to bond?

I know Leila Boukarim will forgive me for these reflections. She is as aghast as I am over the Anglosphere’s tolerance for and complicity in heinous crimes and indignities.

A plague on all your houses. Or how about ten plagues and the release of all people?

Leila Boukarim’s Sundays Are for Feasts recalls the Anglosphere of a few years ago, in which diverse histories, locations, and identities were finally being treated with a degree of respect. It was an important stage of psychological growth for English. It is, after all, a global language thanks to the machinations of the former British Empire and American imperialism. Surely, it had to give up its ethnocentrism and become more like Arabic and Spanish, two languages with standards of hospitality. In the writing and editing of Sundays Are for Feasts, there was respect for the country of Lebanon, for its traditions, for its people, for its foods. But while the words and images were in print, the Anglosphere contributed to horrific forms of aggression against Lebanon, its history, and its people.

Mariam Dreams: The Story of Mariam Al-Shaar and Her Food Truck of Hope seems like the kind of children’s book we’ll all be writing and illustrating in the future. It’s the story of a young, Palestinian woman, who remains stateless and steadfast after multiple generations in Lebanon. The refugee camp she was born in suffices as a country. And even though her agency is constricted by a lack of human rights and dignity, she invents new possibilities for herself and her community. Why a food truck? Maybe because despite not having sources of income or countries to call home, the women of this tale still needed to put food on the table, still had to feed their children, still had to live despite not being afforded a life.

I fear this story is symbolic of what lies ahead for us writers and illustrators of children’s books. Despite the worsening state of the Anglosphere, now wholly unsuitable for children and human life, we will still feel compelled to create books to sustain the hopes and dreams of little ones. We will still put food on the table. Maybe even feasts. We will remember life before despair and labor to invent possibilities. But I pray to God, we will not convince children that a life without rights is the best they can hope for. To do so would be an unforgiveable betrayal and an act of submission to tyranny.

In my few decades of stumbling around the English language looking for “the right words” to prevent people in my high-tech society from condoning the mass murder of other human beings, I’ve not found many authors with sharp enough tongues to cut through English’s hypocrisies and delusions of superiority. Most of what I did find came from generations before mine: Malcom X’s autobiography, George Orwell’s essays, Edward Said’s Orientalism.

Another book that I poured over, and the most powerful one at my disposal, was the Quran. Its ability to reduce by a single verse our great, prestigious societies to meaningless dusty rubble was something I had not found in ANY form of writing or speech. Echoes of its wisdom could be found in the broken or highly perfected English of my Palestinian relations. From the refugee camps to the academies and political offices, Palestinians are excellent orators of truth and defiance. No matter how vile, how dehumanizing, how suffocating the occupation becomes, one gets the sense from speaking to Palestinians that tomorrow or even tonight the oppression will end.

Oh how my ear craves Palestinian English—an English firmly rooted in the Quran, with its strong yet gentle manner of negotiating human affairs. It is the only form of English today that rings true to me. It does not vie for the subordination of others, nor does it seek to dominate the planet with increasing cruelty and callousness. It chooses the right marks for defiance and safeguards the rest with that sense that tomorrow, tonight, the oppression will end.

What would English be in this hour, in this point of history, without the Palestinian men and women that stand in the road waving flags, waving arms, waving the bodies of martyrs at the camera, waving their voices against waves and waves and waves of oppressive violence?

Where is our culture heading? Our English-speaking culture that kills other nations softly with its song, where is it going? Over what edge, what cliff, what abysmal defeat do we plunge?

If the English language is to persist as a system of meaning-making and inspiration, the verbal knot of colonial and decolonial violence must be untied. By failing to confront our hypocrisies and the systemic violence they uphold, we have impoverished our societies of everything good and meaningful. We languish in criminality and futility while those we oppress provide what we cannot: answers to our despair and alienation from life.

Mohammed Al-Kurd’s recent book Perfect Victims reminds me of the autobiography of Malcom X. The sharpness of his tongue reveals a racket of racial hierarchy in which the dehumanized must perform strict forms of humanity for English audiences and still be condemned for not being human enough to deserve life. Ripe for grandmotherly tongue-lashing, English is put on trial. Its metaphors, assurances, duplicities, blinds spots, and delusions of moral supremacy are shown for what they are—tools of subjugation no different from the tanks, guns, snipers, soldiers, apache helicopters, drones, quadcopters, barriers, checkpoints, surveillance towers, prisons, blockades, bombs, and chemical weapons that have choked the life out of the Palestinian population for decades.

“Moreover, the discourses surrounding “congruence” and “moral authority” act as though colonialism has not erected barriers of irreconcilability (as well as literal cement barriers) that separate us from humanity. We are dehumanized, thus we are incapable of humanizing ourselves. Appealing to a “moral universality” cannot save us, for there is no room for us in that morality. Zionism’s objection to the Palestinian People isn’t about how we exist but that we exist at all.” —p.42

“I once credulously believed that our testimonies would be considered credible only once we attained “respectability.” Colonial logic gaslights us to believe that it is our shortcomings, not colonialism itself, that stand between us and liberation. And so we spend our years on a circuitous journey toward an impossible atonement. We accept starting the story at “Secondly.” But in truth, and to state the obvious, nothing renders me killable. Before I threw the rock, they stole my land. Before I picked up the rifle, they shot my loved ones. Before I made the makeshift rocket, they put me in a cage. What I read cannot be used as a pretext to kill me, even if I filled my library with books written by psychopaths, interchangeably stacking copies of Mein Kampf and Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices.” —p.113

“The very moment that the Palestinian exits the womb, he is “unchilded”—flung away from childhood by a “machinery that exists everywhere and always” and treated as both a good-for-nothing nobody and a dangerous ticking bomb at once. The Palestinian is unchilded the first time he talks to his uncle from behind glass or asks his aunt about the tin roofs or tries to decipher what has been erased from the street signs. Or when he embraces his father by a concrete cylinder, telling himself that the explosions he is hearing are just fireworks. Or when he plays soccer on the beach. Somewhere along the line the Palestinian child will stumble across the phrase “legally killed child” used to describe his slain peers: a Yale professor will write a column in the Atlantic about how “it is possible to kill children legally.” And the sniper follows orders.”—p. 149

“A gentle, loving immersion into the gifts of the olive tree and Palestinian culture.”

Olive trees are gentle, strong, resilient, and enduring. Their fruits are bitter-sweet like medicine. The sacredness of their beauty is reflected in sage-green leaves. The worldliness of their beauty is reflected in the hard, ashy colour of their trunks. An olive tree’s beauty soothes the eyes and calms the mind. Proximity alone improves focus, but to engage in harvesting is to connect mind, body, and soul to the life-giving properties of a sacred plant.

Written by Safa Suleiman and illustrated by Anait Semirdzhyan, Hilwa’s Gifts is a gentle, loving immersion into the gifts of the olive tree and Palestinian culture. Olives, olive oil, soap, and fire are material gifts that come from Hilwa, a fruitful olive tree in a Palestinian family’s grove. For Ali, who has come from America to visit his relatives in Palestine, the rigorous process produces much more. Within the song of the harvest (“zeitoon ya zeitoon”), the beating of the branches, the gathering of the olives, and a picnic lunch made up of beloved local foods, Ali’s connection to his family and culture grow deep and meaningful.

With economy and purpose, Safa Suleiman draws immediate attention to the bond Ali has with Hilwa, who was planted by his grandfather and great-grandfather. Ali has climbed Hilwa’s branches and enjoyed the shade of her leaves before, but he’s never witnessed the harvest. At first, he worries the aggressive process will harm his beloved tree, but a gentler method yields little. Joined by Teita and his cousins, a collective shaking of the branches causes Hilwa’s gifts to rain down in abundance.

Anait Semirdzhyan’s digital artwork does an equally masterful job establishing the scene and progressing to the harvest. The beauty and activity of a Palestinian village flow seamlessly in an energetic pattern of full and reduced scenes. Everything evokes the ancient landscape and its living human heritage.

Thank you, Safa Suleiman, for sharing Hilwa’s Gifts with me in advance of its release by Candlewick on April 1st, 2025. Reading it to my children inspired many personal connections to the story. They immediately saw what looked like their own Seedo’s house, which is situated in a Palestinian village near Bethlehem.

In the artificial boundary of the village, where olive groves meet containment fences, there lives an ancient olive tree named Al Badawi. It is thought to be between 3,000 and 5,500 years old, making it potentially the oldest olive tree in the world. Al Badawi is tended and protected by a local farmer and his family. When we visited the grounds in the spring of 2023 and spoke with Al Badawi’s caretaker about the ancient tree’s needs and the needs of the village, a deep sense of responsibility and urgency took root in our hearts. While I have not been able to cultivate those emotions into real actions as yet, receiving Hilwa’s Gifts from Safa has planted new roots of love and inspiration into my heart. One never knows what destiny will bring, but I do know that Al Badawi, the ancient olive tree, has been a witness to the occupants of the land. Generation after generation, their hands and their appreciation have sustained its presence—its permanence.

For those who don’t know the Islamic connection with olive trees, the olive is one of the sacred fruits mentioned in the holy Quran. In the revealed chapter named “The Fig,” Allah uses symbolism to express the meaning of human existence in this world. Swearing by the fig and the olive (of Jerusalem), by Mount Sinai, and by “the secure city” (Mecca), Allah says he has created humanity in the best form and that he will reduce us to the lowest of the low, except those that believe and do good works. For them, there will be everlasting rewards. What better representation of Allah’s gifts to mankind, of his everlasting mercy, than the olive? And what better witness than the olive tree has stood against the ruin of civilizations? No material or intellectual advancement has afforded any of us the ownership of existence. Our civilizations rise and they fall, but the signs of God remain. Nothing can replace the order of God. Not humanity. Not our inventions. Not our wealth and technological power. Not our civilizations, nor their declines.

God has no rivals.

But don’t forget your responsibility to believe and do good works. Planting and preserving the olive tree and its cultural and material gifts is an act of worship as well as a stubborn refusal of spiritual, intellectual, and physical diminishment. The terrible shyness of life that sometimes overcomes us when the world is rife with extreme violence and despair might be defeated by some collective shaking of the branches and joyful songs, along with the knowledge of the ages and God’s purpose for mankind. Palestine is a remedy, not a problem.

Zeitoon, ya zeitoon.

Surah At-Tin - 1-8 - Quran.com

Al Badawi, March 2023 (photo taken by me)

A few months ago, I attended and participated in a read-aloud event by , which commemorated the children’s press conference held at Al Shifa Hospital on November 7th, 2023. One month into what would become a full-scale genocide, a group of children from Gaza orated a speech in English to the press in front of the hospital. The children pleaded for their human rights and asked for the bombing to stop. It broke my heart when I considered the time and energy their parents had invested in teaching them English only for it to be used to interpret Palestinian suffering to a global audience. It further broke my heart that their voices were disregarded and the slaughter continued for more than a year.

During the Story Sunbirds read-aloud, the book that most caught my attention was a picture book about a young girl with two important jobs. In addition to being a kid, Cecilia is the family interpreter, filling in the gaps of understanding at the mechanic, the hospital, the park, the hairdresser, and just about anywhere it is necessary for her parents to speak English instead of Spanish. The job is essential for the family but takes a toll on the character’s well being. In a rare moment of personal attention, Cecilia is forced to interpret her emotions to her family. Soon, help is on the way. An older brother and sister return to help out on the weekend, leaving Cecilia free to play soccer and be a kid sometimes.

Supportive and affirming, The Interpreter is an important new book for children fulfilling adult-sized roles in their family or community. Unacknowledged contributions to family wellbeing can stretch well beyond the demands of communication. This touching story written by Olivia Abtahi belongs in every school and library, but also every hospital. Several years ago, I asked a hospital librarian if there were a book she wished had been written. She said she wished there were more books about sibling carers—children who provide medical care for a sibling or family member. Abtahi has indirectly provided one in the scene in which Cecilia interprets the doctor’s orders to her parents.

The Interpreter was illustrated by Monica Arnaldo. With watercolor and pencil crayons, Arnaldo creates colorful characters and heart-warming family scenes. Cecilia’s emotions were well defined in the illustrations. The reader’s heart crumbles when they all come pouring out.

When I was little, it was often the food, not plot or characters, that engaged my attention in storybooks. What happened to Hansel and Gretel before they found the candy house? Don’t ask me. What happened to them after? Don’t care. I’m too busy imagining my very own candy house with marshmallow pillows, candy floss curtains, and peppermint lampposts. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach offered similarly tantalizing descriptions of food. Who wouldn’t love an enormous juicy peach that is also a cozy escape from the wickedness of the world? Then there was Beatrix Potter, whose little mice and bunnies scampered about illustrated gardens and pantries, stealing food.

All too often these storybook characters followed their noses and wound up in trouble. Children of my generation and older could relate. The best foods were for guests and adults, not kids. Straying into the kitchen for bite of something could land you in hot water. But these were the days of large single-income families living in small, inconvenient towns. The food had to last. And in storybooks as well as real life, it rarely did.

Marcel the Pastry Chef was a book with a different approach to food. Every night, Marcel baked oodles of pastries in the king’s kitchen while the castle-dwellers slept. And every night, he had to devour them to hide the evidence from the chef. It was heavenly to imagine so many pastries, filled with cream and chocolate, all being enjoyed by the main character just so he could stay out of trouble. Eventually, Marcel’s talent was discovered and he opened a pastry shop. Marcel’s love of food led to more people enjoying food and sharing the bounty. Who would have thought such happy endings were possible back then?

These days, more and more storybook characters have opportunity to eat joyfully. Perhaps it’s because we live in a time of abundance and convenience. Or perhaps it’s that global food cultures now influence the types of stories we tell about food in English. Recipe books aren’t a new thing by any means, but it’s taken a while for the culture and people behind the meals to be given due credit for their marvelous inventions. For far too long, recipes have been appropriative and inaccurate. So, even though I love all kinds of food, I’ve never been too fond of following a recipe. The tantalizing images and descriptions rarely become a reality, making you aware of the blurry line between fiction and nonfiction when you don’t have the cultural skills to pull something off. And who can tolerate those boring lists of steps and ingredients when hungry?

For these reasons and more, I was a trifle hesitant to read and review a recipe storybook for children. Would the recipes be crammed at the back or scattered here and there interrupting the story? Would they have lengthy, boring descriptions that ruin the fun of cooking—and reading? Would they trick children into believing that good food comes from glossy pages, not beloved family members?

A book with 25 global recipes needs a strong theme to tie everything together into a single story for children. Luckily, the creators of this tale had one up their sleeves—Ramadan! It’s the time of year when Muslims around the world are sharing cultural dishes with friends and family in person and on social media. Everyone wants to know who’s cooking what and how it’s made. Every home is full of delicious smells when the sun goes down.

Ramadan on Rahma Road offers much more than recipes. First, there’s the visual feast for the senses in the colourful, decorative homes, clothing, and dishware. Islamic patterns decorate table cloths and kitchen spaces. Flowers and plants add beauty and warmth while cats and birds animate the scene. Next is the mouth-watering descriptions of beloved cultural foods, made from scratch by diverse characters. Each family’s story stretches into the recipes, making the directions personable and easy to follow. Stories introduce various languages and places, exposing the multiplicity of Muslims and the oneness of Islam. They also include subtle pieces of information about Ramadan and fasting, answering potential worries like what to do if you accidentally break your fast and is it okay to still exercise. Mostly, it’s an intimate glance at the lives of families in the hours before iftar, or breakfast.

Don’t take the national designation of recipes too seriously as some of the dishes might have originated elsewhere. For example, the Lebanese origins of Fatoush are uncontested, but it is a salad Palestinians love to eat during Ramadan. The levant region has an interconnected food culture, which a certain interloper is continually trying to steal. So beware the internet and the authority of google searches when it comes to Arab food. Just because Arab and Muslim culture is generous it doesn’t mean everything is up for grabs. Ahem, ahem.

On that topic, Gaza has been under siege for over a year, leading to a cruel and preventable man-made famine. Please look up the recipe book Tabkha. All proceeds of sales go to the Gazan chef and her family. The occupation has a history of assaulting Gaza during Ramadan, undoubtedly seeking to shake the foundations of faith along with every other foundation that sustains life in a society. May we direct our generosity where it is needed.

https://tabkhabook.com/products/tabkha-recipies-from-under-the-rubble