Naima B. Robert – A Childrens Book Your Love Letter to the Next Generation
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Welcome to
this presentation
that is part of the Muslim Writers Summit
2022.
I am Naima b Robert. I'm an award
winning author of almost 30 books for children,
teens, and adults. I'm also an editor, and,
Alhamdulillah, I'm a book coach
and somebody who believes
very, very, very strongly
in the power of books, the power of
stories,
and the value
of leaving a legacy through your writing. So,
my presentation today is
your children's book,
your love letter to the next generation.
Now,
when it comes to writing,
there seems to be a higher
hierarchy.
Some books are considered more important than others.
Some types of writing are considered more prestigious
or more difficult than others. And sometimes,
children's books can
seem like almost a poor cousin, like it's
some kind of cop out, right? Like if
you were a serious writer, you'd be writing
for adults.
It's almost as if children's stories and children's
books are not worthy of our time, not
really worthy of our talent and attention.
But I guess I'd like to ask you
to consider,
casting your mind back,
back to your childhood years,
what was one book
that stayed with you?
One book, one story, one tale that stayed
with you for whatever reason,
whether it was because
you loved the characters so much, whether it
was because of the storytelling style,
whether it was the moral of the story,
what's a book
that stayed with you?
I'd love to see you write in the
comments when you've thought of that book from
childhood that stayed with you.
Chances are if you have children of your
own, you have introduced that book to your
own children. You've wanted to share it with
your own children because the reality is
part of the formation of our personality and
our character in our youth is the stories
that we hear, the stories that we're told.
And not just the stories themselves,
but the experience
of either having the stories read to us
by a loved one
or ourselves
exploring
these stories
because we can read by ourselves.
I know, for myself, there are certain books
that I grew up with, Where the Wild
Things Are, for example.
Absolute classic and one that I've shared with
all of my children and, you know, they
will probably share with their children mainly because
of the joy that I got out of
sharing it with them and the joy that
they got sharing it with me.
These stories
that we hear growing up,
these books that we read growing up, they
they shape us and they stay with us.
And so,
really, my whole journey into writing
was based on
a desire
to give my child
a story that would stay with them.
I would love to say that I had
a really big goal for, you know, bestsellers
and, you know, my books being read all
around the world. But, really,
my goal was much more modest than that.
It was to give my child I only
had one at the time.
To give my child the experience of reading
a beautifully
told story,
a be having a beautifully produced book
that reflected
who we are, who we were.
And, that was the thing that motivated me
to start writing.
That was what got me, you know, experimenting
with different stories, different storytelling styles until I
found my voice.
Continuing to practice and writing some really awful
stories at the beginning, but
continuing and learning and exploring and doing better
and starting to write better stories and then
eventually
sending those stories off to publishers
and, alhamdulillah,
getting my first positive response back. And that
book was The Swirling Hijab.
That was published many years ago now. I
wanna say 2,003,
a while back.
But, since then,
you know, almost 20 children's books later,
I
can say to you
unequivocally
that
having children around the world
reading
a story that you've told,
loving a book that you have lovingly put
together and having it stay with them, be
a part of their childhood, be a part
of their memories,
be a part of how they see the
world and shaping, really,
their childhood experiences
is one of the greatest gifts as a
writer
because the next generation
is the
future.
And I've worked with, masha'Allah, so many clients
who come to me because they have a
passion,
they have had experiences,
or they have some expertise, and they want
to be able to express that for
maybe, initially, it's just their own children.
Maybe it's children within their community.
Maybe it's children that they work with in
school, children that they
know out there
need these stories.
And they come to me and they say,
look, I've got this idea, but I just
don't know
how to start. I don't know where to
begin. I don't know how to start this
story, how to tell this story. And even
if I do write this story, what do
I do next?
And I'm of firmly
of the opinion that every single one of
us could write a beautiful children's book
because every one of us has had experiences
that could be beneficial to a child out
there.
Every one of us has a passion.
Every one of us has an some some
kind of expertise
that could be beneficial
to the next generation.
So, if you're not sure what I mean
when I say, you know, experiences, passion, etcetera,
I wanna give you a visual example using
my own books.
So,
when I went for Hajj,
I went for Hajj with my late husband.
And,
when I got back from Hajj, I I
wanted to
explore the experience,
and I was also curious on how to
kind of break down the Hajj for for
children. Right? Because it's,
it's quite a complicated procedure and we did
a lot of learning while we were in
that process.
So, I sat down and I came up
with a story. Right? It was more like
a prose poem.
And that prose poem ended up being this
book here,
Going to
Mecca.
Come with the pilgrims as they set out
on a journey.
A journey of patience to the city of
Mecca.
And it basically takes you through the rights,
the rights of the Hajj,
to all the different places that you go
to on Hajj.
And, BookTrust said it captures the ethos and
excitement of this important religious practice.
And Paper Tiger said a great introduction to
the meaning and reality of the Hajj. Now,
this story
could never have been written
if I hadn't gone on Hajj. And if
I hadn't gone on Hajj and wanted to
now share this knowledge that I had of
now how the Hajj works, etcetera,
If I hadn't wanted to do that,
this book would never have been written. Certainly,
I would never have written it. So, this
is an example of me
learning something
and expressing what I had learned in a
way that was palatable to children that way
that children could understand, okay?
Similarly,
some of us, we are passionate about certain
things, certain ideas, certain principles, certain values.
And in in this case, in the case
of the next book that I want to
share with you,
I was passionate about I am passionate about
helping people who have some kind of message
to share. I'm passionate about them translating that
message into something that can be consumed by
children. And in this case,
with
a brother that you may be familiar with,
his name is Mufti Menck,
One of the things that he talks a
lot about is forgiveness.
And,
you know, the idea of
forgiveness and letting things go was also a
very big part of my coaching practice and
what I would teach my clients.
So, that passion
led to this book.
And, in fact, I would say that this
wasn't just my passion that led to this
book. It was also, you know, my coauthor,
Mufti Menck's, passion for helping people to understand
that, you know, negative emotions and and sadness
and disappointment, we shouldn't hold on to them.
We should be letting them go, forgiving for
the sake of Allah, etcetera. So, let it
go,
learning the lessons of forgiveness,
it starts with life isn't always easy, even
when you're small. You may feel angry or
hurt or sad. We're only human after all,
and it's a charming way to introduce children
to one of the core character traits in
Islam,
forgiveness.
Now this was a passion project.
So this came from my passion for helping
children to become emotionally intelligent, emotionally resilient, and
also understand
more
what our dean teaches us about coping with
life. So, that was that. So, what have
I covered? I've covered the experience. So,
taking your experiences
and retelling them in a way that is
appealing to children.
I've talked about having a passion, something that
you're excited about, something that you believe in
strongly and being able to now translate that
into something that's palatable for children. So passion
sorry. Yeah. So experience,
passion and then expertise or knowledge. Right?
And, subhanAllah,
when my publisher who published, Ramadan Moon and
Going to Mecca, when they said, okay, we
wanna do another book that looks at, you
know, Muslim culture, Islamic culture. You know, what
what can we do it about? And I
said,
we don't hear a lot about Muslim weddings
or the way that Muslims get married, you
know, with the nikka and the maha and
the the the the contract and all that
kind of thing. I said, let's write a
book about that. Let's look at a world
of Muslim weddings. And, of course, that is
the basis of this book, Mabruk,
which,
says, there are wonderful Muslim weddings all over
the world and you are invited.
See the bridegroom riding a great white horse
in Pakistan,
come to a fantastic feast in Morocco,
dance to the beat of drums in Somalia,
eat wedding cake and biryani at a British
Muslim wedding, then watch the happy couple ride
away to begin their new life together. Ma
brook.
This is an example of a book that
shares information.
This genre, we'd call it creative nonfiction
because it's not a story. There isn't a
main character. It doesn't have a beginning, middle,
and end. It literally is a look at
different cultures and how they celebrate weddings. And
then it talks about the Islamic,
the actual Islamic guidelines when it comes to
the nikka and the waleema, etcetera.
So, that was an example of some knowledge
that I had that I was able to,
hamdulillah, share in a book and make it
palatable for children.
And, literally, if you go to your local
library or even go to your children's bookshelf,
you can
pull out
books and be able to see, okay, so
this was obviously something that the author is
passionate about or this is something that she's
experienced herself or this is her way of
passing on knowledge. And then, of course, there
are stories where you just had a great
idea for a story and you told the
story.
But I will say,
most of the best stories
have
a core message.
Something of value that the author wanted to
pass on to children. Even if it looks
like an innocent story about a child doing
x, y and z, there is very often
and I'm sure if you write stories, I'm
sure that you will find that you often
have
something
something deeper. There's a deeper meaning.
There's a deeper reason that you are actually
telling that story.
And this is
your love letter to the next generation.
Because whatever it is that you
are
sharing in your children's story,
as I said, whether it's knowledge that you
want to pass on so that this becomes
a sadaqa jaria for you, Whether it is
something you're passionate about and you're excited to
share it with the next generation and get
them enthusiastic as well.
Whether it's something that you have experienced and
you know that children experience this too and
you want to help them through that process
or whether you have an amazing story with
a great message and a fantastic moral to
share,
whichever one of these fits the idea that
you have today,
remember that this is not child's play.
This
message, this story,
this gift that you are giving
is something that
will impact the minds and the hearts of
the children that will grow up to be
the adults of the future.
And
this is a huge amena,
and it's a huge blessing.
It is
an absolute honor
to be allowed into the hearts and minds
of children,
And it's really a privilege for parents to
choose your book and decide that this is
the book they're going to buy and read
to their children.
But it's something that's available to us all.
I believe that as long as you have
a story to tell, a message to share,
or knowledge to spread, you
can put that into the form that will
be helpful to children, that will be enjoyable
to children, that adults will, you know, love
to share with their children. And, you
know, 100, probably 100 of clients later, 100
of students later, we can see that every
one of you
has a children's book in you.
You just need to know how to find
it and how to express it in a
way that is relevant to children, that gets
gets children hooked, gets children engaged.
And that's learnable. It's teachable.
So if you have a calling on your
heart
to write that love letter to the next
generation,
my advice today is do it.
Go for it.
Don't wait.
Of course, we all will have
moments of doubt,
moments of fear,
moments where we think, well, why would the
world want another book, another children's book? Right?
What am I saying or what am I
doing that is special, that is different to
what anybody else is doing? Well,
put the volume down
on those voices
of fear and self doubt, and turn the
volume up on talks like this
that remind you that you do have something
worthy of sharing,
that you do have something special to say.
And your unique story
is as unique as you are,
and nobody can replicate it.
So if you have a calling on your
heart
to write that love letter to the next
generation,
go for it.
Miss Miller.
And if you need any help with resources,
with support, with help, or you just wanna
be inspired,
click on the link in the description
and go for it.
I can't wait to celebrate your success with
you. Jazakum Allah Khayron for your attention. And
we'll see you in the next session of
the Muslim and Writers Summit
2022.
Jazakum Allah Khayron. Salaam Alaikum.