My daughter read this book last year, during Ramadan. She was in grade 1 then and she gave this book two thumbs up!
It is written in language that she could understand and told the story in a way that made it easy to relate to the characters. At the end, in the Author’s Notes, the author writes “Ramadan Mubarak!”, and then explains that this means “Have a blessed Ramadan!”. My daughter practiced this a few times so that she could say it to her Muslim classmates.
Ghandi said: “The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear”. In order to ensure that our children do not grow up to fear other cultures or people who are “different” from them, we need to introduce them to all the diverse people in their communities when they are young. We need to spend time with people of all skin colours, all religions, all sexual orientations … people who come from all different countries and who speak all different languages. If our children grow up with an understanding of all these amazing differences, and know that it is the diversity that makes our world so fantastic, then they will not believe that there is an “us vs. them”. They will know that we are all more the same than we are different. They will know that we are all one big human family. The media and some of our leaders want to divide us and make us fear and hate one another for their own gains. We have to work every day to ensure that we don’t allow our children to be taught to fear or hate those who are different from them. We need to spend our time talking to our children about all the people in our community so that they know that we value inclusion and acceptance.
We highly recommend this book to help increase your child’s understanding of other cultures, as well as their empathy and compassion.