For Teachers

Writing and Illustrating Muslim characters in children’s literature: Interview and Giveaway with Author Saadia Faruqi and Illustrator Hatem Aly

By on August 10, 2018   /   Author Interviews, Book Lists, children's bookstores, Common Core & NGSS, Cross-Curricular, Diversity, Fiction, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, Giveaways, independent bookstores, MUF Contributor Books, New Releases, Publishing & Promotion, STEM, Writing  

I am thrilled to interview Author Saadia Faruqi and Illustrator Hatem Aly and discuss their new book – Meet Yasmin!  Saadia and Hatem talk about their experience developing a story with a Muslim main character and why diversity in children’s books matters.

 

Saadia, Yasmin is a brave girl who has a big imagination and loves adventure. Why is it important for you to write/illustrate the story of an empowering ethnic minority character?

 Saadia: So far we’ve seen brown characters mostly in issues books. They typically face a problem – or issue – that directly relates to their identity. For instance a Muslim main character facing Islamophobia, or an African American main character experiencing racism. Although I do believe that those sorts of books are helpful to our understanding of critical social and political issues, it also means that minority groups are otherized further, they’re seen as different, or only viewed in the context of that issue. Yasmin is the antidote to this problem: a Muslim girl in America, a brown first generation American, who is perfectly normal and average, facing all the issues every child her age faces, and having the same happy disposition we expect to see from all our children. It was really important to me not to make Yasmin or her family “the other” – someone different because of their skin color or their religion or ethnic background. There is a sort of empowerment in that normalization that only minority groups can truly understand.

 

Hatem, was it important for you to take the author’s background into consideration while creating the illustrations in the book?

Hatem: It is important, However, I didn’t have to work so hard on being familiar with Saadia’s background since I can relate to many elements of her background already being brought up in Egypt and Yasmin’s family seems so familiar to me in a broader sense. I did work on bringing up some Pakistani visual elements but illustrating Yasmin went organically harmonized with the author’s experience and my own as well.

 

In the recent times, literary agents and publishing houses for children and young adult books have made an open call for submissions from Muslim authors and illustrators. Can you explain why it matters to include diverse characters in children’s and young adult literature?

 Saadia: It’s really crucial to have as much diversity in all sorts of literature, not just in terms of characters but also stories. I actually come from an adult literary background, and I see the same calls for diversity in that age group as well, and it warms my heart to witness these changes in publishing. The reason this matters so much is two-fold (and something we in kidlit talk about constantly): mirrors and windows. My children need a mirror. They need to see themselves reflected in the pages of the books they read. Growing up in Pakistan I didn’t have that. I read exclusively white stories, by white authors, and my worldview was shaped with an extreme inferiority complex because of that. I don’t want my children to have the same, and I know nobody else does either. Also, other children need windows. They should be able to read and enjoy books that show a different sort of family than theirs, a different culture than theirs. This is the only way we can have a younger generation that’s more empathetic and understanding and aware than our previous generations were.

Hatem: It is critically necessary to show diversity in literature of all ages and to express a wider range of life elements in people’s lives. In my work I sometimes pay attention to some things that bothered me as a child but also that I found intriguing. For example, I remember almost all comics and story books took place in a sort of a suburban –house per family- neighborhood and I felt strange finding nobody living in an apartment like myself and most of the millions of people in Cairo alone or at least everyone I know. So I felt alienated but amused from a distance longing for something I can’t define. It seemed to me there was a generic way of living that needs to be challenged and I couldn’t put my finger on the issue exactly until I was older. It’s important for children to see themselves and to see others as well in books.

 

How can parents, librarians, and readers help support books like Meet Yasmin?

 Saadia: The key is not only to read the book but to discuss it. You could use the back matter which has some really good discussion guides for students, and there is also an educator’s guide for teachers. Finally, and for me most excitingly, Capstone has some very cool downloadable activities based on Yasmin, which kids are going to love. I encourage parents, librarians and teachers to take advantage of those as much as possible.

Hatem: The best thing is to read the book, and share it with others! Personally I feel that the most powerful way is to read it to students or story time at public libraries as well as parents to their younger children. I find that helps building bonds between children and books.  I love libraries, so I ask everyone to walk into their local public library and suggest that they buy a few copies for their shelves. Most libraries have book suggestion tools for their patrons, either online or in person. The same goes for your child’s school library.

 

Who are your personal author/illustrator idols?

 Hatem: It’s more of an emergence of inspiration fueled by a mix of interesting people. Many names come to mind, and many I will forget. Some whose work I enjoy and admire are Bill Watterson, Tove Jansson, Maurice Sendak, Jon Klassen, Luke Pearson, Marc Boutavant, Sempé, Zep, Jillian Tamaki, Lynda Barry, Vera Brosgol, Hayao Miyazaki, Naoki Urasawa, Edward Gorey, Kate Beaton, Carson Ellis, Oliver Jeffers and many more.

Saadia: Some of my favorite writers are my own peers, because I believe writing is best done as part of a community. In early reader and picture books I admire Hena Khan who’s been a trailblazer as far as Muslim representation in kidlit is concerned, and really carved a space not only for herself but for others as well. In terms of illustrators, I’m actually a big fan of Hatem Aly, haha! I feel very blessed that he’s part of Team Yasmin because it’s so important for me to have a person doing the art who really understands what it means to be Muslim, and first generation, and sometimes “the other”. He really gets my stories in a way that I think another illustrator wouldn’t have, and I’m very grateful for that.

 

What can readers take away from Meet Yasmin?

Saadia: Readers will enjoy seeing themselves in Meet Yasmin, even if they are very different in superficial ways to Yasmin and her family. Yasmin is literally the every-girl, and her family is the same as every other family. With everything that’s going on politically in our country at the moment, I hope that Yasmin can help readers understand that Americans come in all colors, and that there’s beauty and worth in diversity, despite what they may hear in the news sometimes.

Hatem: I believe that readers will have fun with Yasmin and recognize similarities despite some superficial differences. They will be inspired to be curious, creative, and believing in themselves all the way even if things go wrong sometimes. There are a lot of lessons a child can learn, but there’s also a lot of entertainment which is so important to develop in this age group of readers.

 

For more about Saadia and her work, visit her website. You can also connect with her on Twitter.

For more about Hatem and his work, visit his website. You can also connect with him on Twitter.

Thanks, Saadia and Hatem!

 

Want to own your very own copy of Meet Yasmin? Enter our giveaway by leaving a comment below! 

You may earn extra entries by blogging/tweeting/facebooking the interview and letting us know. The winner will be announced here on Wednesday, August 15, 2018 and will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (US/Canada only) to receive the book.

 

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The Mysterious Tablet of Mystery Words

By on August 6, 2018   /   Articles, For Teachers  

While digging in your backyard, you uncover a rectangular rock covered in a strange script. Some letters look a bit like English, while others are oddly shaped, and none of it makes any sense.

Who carved the rock? What does it say? And how long has this artifact been buried?

You take your rock to the university. Scholars in the Classical Studies department identify the script as an ancient version of Greek. What you thought was a rock is actually a clay tablet from nearly two thousand years ago!

Also, and I can’t believe I failed to mention this before, the backyard where you unearthed this tablet is located near the Greek city of Olympia, where the original Olympic Games took place, and site of the statue of Zeus that was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Could this inscription be related to an ancient athletic event? Could it have had something to do with the statue of Zeus? What secrets will be revealed when the experts finish their translation?

The script on the tablet, when translated, describes the construction activities of an unnamed swineherd, on behalf of his absent master, an unnamed mistress, and an old man named Laertes.

…..[swineherd] he himself built for the swine of his master who was away,
away from/unaided by his mistress and the old man Laertes,
with stones (he had) hauled, and he surrounded/crowned it with wild pear trees (prickly pears)
and he drove stakes outside it in continuous succession
dense and close-set, hewn from black oak:
and within the open court made twelve pigsties

You are informed that many surviving writings from ancient times record inventories or commercial transactions. Or in this case, the construction of a pigsty.

How does this compare with your expectations? How do you feel?

Something about that name, Laertes, strikes you as familiar.

You conduct a search, and find references to The Odyssey, an ancient story of Greek mythology. At the end of a ten-year war and ten-year return, the warrior-king Odysseus, the son of Laertes, arrives home to find his kingdom in chaos, his infant son all grown up, and his wife beset by suitors who all assume that he is dead.

The story is broken into 24 rhapsodes, and the tablet you’ve found is an excerpt from Rhapsode 14. In a story of gods and mortals, sorcery and monsters, seers and spirits, you’ve found the one part devoted to the construction of an ordinary pigsty. And it’s funny because Odysseus, dressed in rags at this point in the story and traveling under an assumed name, is the swineherd’s boss. He is the unnamed “master” of that first line.

Congratulations, you’ve discovered one of the greatest literary works of human history!

How likely is this scenario?

This tablet actually exists. It was recently unearthed by an expedition in Olympia, and represents the oldest existing excerpt of The Odyssey ever found in Greece. And yet, if we didn’t also have the rest of the story, we might easily mistake this masterwork of classical literature for just another record of daily life in ancient times.

It makes me wonder which of those inventories and transactional tablets might also be parts of larger stories that we no longer have.

And two thousand years from now, if archaeologists were to discover a single random page from your favorite book, would they be able to figure out what the story is about, or if it’s a work of fiction at all?

Leave your thoughts in the comments!

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Indie Spotlight: da Shop, Honolulu, Hawai‘i

By on August 3, 2018   /   Articles, children's bookstores, For Kids, For Parents, For Teachers, independent bookstores, Indie Spotlight  

At long last Honolulu has an independent bookstore, da Shop,  featuring children’s books!  Hooray! Bess Press, a highly-regarded regional publisher in the Kaimuki district, opened da Shop (https//dashophnl.com) this spring and is carrying three main kinds of books: best sellers, Hawaiiana, and children’s and young adult. We’re talking today with David DeLuca, store manager.

MUF: After years of nimble marketing as successful regional publishers in Honolulu, what inspired you to go retail and turn your showroom space into a general bookstore ?
DD: – The impetus for creating an independent bookshop came from conversations from customers and community members. We often seek dialogue with the folks we aim to create books for and often times the conversation would turn to the desire for a local, community bookstore. That was something we felt too was lacking, predominately because of what this kind of retail represents; a place for gathering, conversation, a sharing space of knowledge and ideas for all ages. So we took the time to do some research and look at various book retailing models, traditional and contemporary, and came up with the concept for da Shop. And now three years later here we are with a 1,000sq ft bookshop that is focusing on celebrating literature, regionally, nationally and nationally.

MUF: Besides your own Bess Press books, what kinds of things are you featuring at Da Shop? How do you choose what to carry?
DD: As a 39-year old publisher, of education and popular interest content, it was important for us to highlight a book selection that was celebratory of the work done within our industry. All the titles we carry have received some special merit or recognition for the quality of editorial, design/illustration, or something else. Our goal was to truly have a selection divided into thirds that pulled, what we feel, a diverse selection of noteworthy titles. All our titles in our children and juvenile section for example, cover contemporary issues and dynamics and have received high praise from credible sources such as School Library Journal, American Library Association, or other reliable reviewers that most directly work with the age groups of readers those titles are targeted towards.
The other emphasis for us as a brick-and-mortar was to create a space that was hospitable, inviting, and intimate. To do this, we placed a high value on design so that we could maintain that “showroom” style, but also offer areas for kids, adults too, to sit down and explore a book. Reading and literature is meant to be experienced, so we wanted to make that come full circle from our curated title selection to the environment that offered those titles.

MUF: Earlier in the summer, you set up the on-site bookstore for the Biennial Conference on Literature and Hawaii’s Children at Chaminade, where you displayed and sold a great variety of favorite children’s fiction, nonfiction, and picture books. Will you being doing the same in the children’s section of your shop?
DD: Our collective goal, as book buyers and staff is to routinely read through the reviews and nationally recognized works that come out each year. Emphasis for us is to provide a combination of classics and new titles that can be categorized together and also promote each other. We cannot make every title available, but by making ourselves knowledgeable of the variety of literature out there, we can better help inform our customers. We regularly rotate our title selection so that it can be seasonally appropriate, but also so that we can have titles available in the event we are able to participate in a conference or another event.

MUF: As middle-grade authors, we’re curious to know: what are some of the titles, new and classic, fiction and nonfiction you are currently selling or recommending to readers aged 8 to 12?
DD: Well, being an independent bookstore in Hawaii we perhaps exemplify regional better than anywhere else. This idea simply due to our remoteness. So our emphasis is always to find interesting content that local readers can relate to or are interested in. After doing that, we then try to pair titles with similar or like themes that are on a national or international thread.
We are trying to capture a good variety of fiction and non-fiction as it relates to middle-grade readers, as well as capture the wide range of readability amongst this group. At the moment a handful of titles we are carrying that covers this range are:
A Different Pond by Bao Phi and Thi Bui
Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall
The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser
Charlie & Mouse by Laurel Snyder
Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson and Sean Qualls
Wishtree by Katherine Applegate
Hello Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly
Inside Out & Back Again by Thannha Lai
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
Refugee by Alan Gratz
Ghosts  and Drama by Raina Telgemeier
Pax by Sara Pennypacker

 Titles on the higher independent reader side include:
Vincent and Theo, The Van Gogh
Brothers by Deborah Heiligman and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

MUF: Owner/founders of independent bookstores always have a bookstore ideal they try to make real. What’s your dream for your bookstore? What atmosphere do you want to create?
DD: I think all business owners need to have a dream built into their philosophy and one that that they can routinely aspire towards. For me, and my co-owners, our dream was to create an environment that celebrates the entire book, from editorial conception through artistic design and print-production. We wanted to create a space that folks could gather in and have a conversation, or simply sit quietly and browse through a book.
By building da Shop so that it opens up into our book warehouse and packaging fulfillment, folks can see that “behind-the-scenes” reality of distributing books. This also allows for us to lend our space towards events that cater to the community and the bookshop as a community resource. Developing weekly events, that can make the themes presented inside the books we carry, we are striving toward regularly offering immersive experiences that provoke thought and discussion. To us, this celebratory concept combined with offering events helps us take one step toward our dream of opening an environment that encourages children, young adults and adults to engage and be readers who think.

MUF: Please tell us about events and activities coming up at Da Shop, particularly those that might be of interest to middle-graders.
DD: Well, our event calendar is constantly changing with new and interesting happenings, so it is important to check out our website’s events page to see what is happening currently. This next month a few things we are doing are with the Society of Children’s Book Writer’s and Illustrators workshop (August 18, details at hawaii.scbwi.org), a Yoga story time, and our middle-graders book club is beginning in September. There is more to come as we continue to develop partnerships with other business and organizations that offer services with subjects of interest to young readers.

MUF:  Thank you David.  One of the joys of doing these Indie spotlights is discovering even more books I need to read.  Think I’ll stop by tomorrow for a copy of Bao Phi’s A Different Pond.
Readers, when you visit Honolulu, be sure to check out da Shop!

 

 

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