Naima B. Robert – Our Favourite Books this Ramadhan!
AI: Summary ©
The speakers share their experiences with books and recommend books like Migo and Ali, as well as "how to pray" by Zaynab Mian. They also mention a book on a woman named Leila Togader and share a gift from Anafiya for a book. They discuss various books and books they enjoyed, including a disturbing book on leila togader, a disturbing book on leila togader, and a disturbing book on leila togader. They encourage viewers to support their children's book activators and encourage people to not accept free PDFs. They also mention a new book on leila togader and encourage people to support it.
AI: Summary ©
This is your sister Naeema b Robert here
and I'm an award winning author,
editor and coach. And today,
I'm coming to you in 2 capacities. 1
as a as as an author, but the
other as a mom. I have 5 children,
alhamdulillah.
And this lockdown Ramadan that we have,
been through has really opened up a whole
world of amazing books for my girls and
I. So I just wanted to share with
you,
the top books that I have been using
this Ramadan or that my my daughters in
particular
have been enjoying this Ramadan. And, of course,
majority of these books are, you know, applicable
and relevant outside of Ramadan. So if you
didn't manage to get hold of these during
Ramadan and you think that they look good,
please do visit the vendors and buy them
anyway because
we've got summer coming up and books are
always good, right? Like we don't need an
occasion to read books.
So let's dive in to my list of
books that have helped us make the most
of our time in our lockdown Ramadan.
So the first book I'd like to share
with you is actually by a dear friend
of mine, Fatima Barkatullah,
and it is called Khadija,
mother of history's greatest nation. It's published by
Learning Roots and it's basically
a a a a mini novel.
Well, it's not a novel. It's actually a
a biography.
But it's written in such a style that
the kids read it literally like a novel.
Okay? So it's a chapter book as you
can see. It doesn't have pictures or anything
like that but my daughter read it before
and it stayed with her and she she
loved it, this Ramadan as well. And she
basically picked it up and she did not
put it down until it was done. So
Khadija,
mother of history's greatest nation. If you haven't
got it, definitely worth getting, I would say,
age range, maybe 8, 9 plus,
depending on their level, inshallah.
Okay. And here's another favorite in our house
from reading roots from learning roots. And it
is the read and rise book.
And, I really had the intention of teaching
my youngest, Amani, who's now 8, to read,
Arabic properly this Ramadan. And the amazing thing
about this book is that it actually comes
with a pen called a key tab, which
is really cute. And, you know, basically the
pen allows them to read along with the
book. So you'll see like,
when they're learning the letters, you'll see on
the pages like this, you can actually touch
the page with the key tab, and it
will say the sound that, that's on the
page. So I was using this a lot
in Ramadan,
and we will continue to use it afterwards
because it's been really helpful for them, masha'Allah,
in getting their their letters right. And, actually,
a funny story.
As some of you may know, I lived
in Egypt with all my children at one
point and my 2 girls were born there.
So they went to Egyptian school, they went
to Arabic school. So when we came back
to England, my eldest, my eldest daughter, Maryam,
who has her own channel,
was reading Arabic. Okay? And she had memorized
Quran, I think, up to Surah Jumuah.
And when we came to the UK, unfortunately,
a lot of that
basically fell off the wagon. My bad completely,
but it did. And this Ramadan,
the beautiful thing and the thing I'm so
grateful for is that she using that read
and rise book, she
basically revised,
Arabic reading and she revived her Arabic reading.
And then when she started actually reading Quran,
she used this book from Learning Roots,
which is also really, really good, because
it's just really clear
in terms of the layout. You can see
it's got the tajweed rule numbers and it's
also compatible with the key tabs. So they
can actually press on it and hear the
ayat being read out, mashAllah.
And she
basically started reading Surah An Naba
and, you know, Naba. And we couldn't believe
it. SubhanAllah, you know, we've been in this
country for about 3 years and she's not
really been reading. And, masha'Allah,
this Ramadan and, alhamdulillah, from one of the
many blessings of our Ramadan, was that she
started reading Quran again. So now she's back
reading
and,
this is a really, really helpful,
book for the children. It's not a full
must haf, you know. So they've just got
the juz in here. And if you do
have the kitab, then they can literally just
use that to do their murajah, their memorization
and their revision,
independently. So love that and definitely one to
have if you don't have it yet.
Right. So moving on, I wanna share a
couple of books with you that my youngest
particularly enjoyed.
And the first one is this, Migo and
Ali,
love for the prophets.
Okay. I'm sure you're all familiar with the
amazing Zainab Mian,
who is the the author and publisher of
these books. But what was wonderful about this
Amigu and Ali book is that it tells
the stories of the prophets in a really
child centric way.
And
it covers the main points of each of
the prophets stories, but in a really child
friendly child centric way. And my daughter just
literally the books came and I sent her
to bed and I went to check on
her and guess what? She wasn't sleeping.
She was reading. But if my daughter is
staying up late at night reading about the
prophets, then I am all for it. I
don't know about you. So me go and
Ali, masha'Allah, definitely a favorite in our house,
masha'Allah.
And another book as well by Zaynab Mian
is this one,
duas for kids.
We used this one as well, reading a
dua everyday. That one was really really helpful,
mashallah. And she also has a book called
how to pray. And my children were actually
quizzing each other,
on the tashahood
just to see like who was doing it
correctly and you know who was, you know,
saying something else. So that was really, really
helpful,
So that was good. And then here is
a surprise one. This
jumped out. It was on my girl's bookshelf
and
my daughter comes down and she says to
me, oh, there's one book that I like
to read before I go to bed every
night. I was like, which one is it?
She says, the gratitude one. I said, which
one is it? And then she showed me
this Alhamdulillah
4 series book.
And this the Alhamdulillah
4
series is published by Aina and you may
be familiar with them. And it's basically,
subhanAllah,
like
just
little paintings
and simple things
to be grateful for
And you know, really relatable things. You know
that that everybody, children and and every anyone
else can, you know, can can identify with.
But she just really, really enjoyed it, And,
she she read it from cover to cover.
She said, I like to read it before
I go to sleep.
So, you know, if my 8 year old
tells me, you know, I like to read
this Islamic Islamic book before I go to
sleep, I'm like, yeah. You're getting a thumbs
up from me,
So
there are a couple of books as well
that I was gifted by,
Anafiya gifts and I will link to them
in the comments. But
beautiful, beautiful books. I had seen them around.
I hadn't got my hands on them. And
then the one of them was sold out.
And Anafiya Gifts sent them to me as
a gift and may Allah reward you, sis,
for that amazing gift because they are
these
amazing, amazing books
by Ndeh Hassan
and, masha'Allah,
2 gorgeous gorgeous hardback books
full of amazing illustrations,
so much detail.
Oh, so scrummy.
Love them.
And, this one is very, very multicultural, very
diverse, very inclusive book on Ramadan around the
world. So looking at the different cultures, the
different
traditions, the different foods, and, of course, the
illustrations incorporate the clothes and also the decor
of each of those places.
So super juicy for our kids to to
to kind of read through and enjoy.
And for those of you who like to
do a little bit more with your books,
a fantastic
resource for jumping off into some map work,
you know, some study of, you know, the
geography of these places and stuff like that.
So we really enjoyed that one. And this
one is her new one.
And, Hassan's new book,
The Most Powerful Night. And really happy to
see a book on Leila Togader.
We I don't think we have many books
that are specifically about Leila Togader, masha'Allah.
My daughters really enjoyed this one and it
really kind of got them excited about Leila
Tukhadr and finding Leila Tukhadr. So really, really
enjoyed that one. Definitely,
a soon to be classic and definitely one
that you wanna have on your shelf, inshallah.
And I'm just reaching behind me because
I wanna just share 2 more books with
you before I finish up this video. So
the other 2 books that we've enjoyed this
month have been
well, I have to bring this one of
course.
My Ramadan moon book. Now,
you know, a fairly established mashallah classic. You
know, it's been going since 2,009
people.
2009 this was published and it's still going
strong.
So much to to love about this book.
Masha'Allah.
You know the I still enjoy reading it
and as the author, if I still enjoy
reading it then I think that I'm quite
happy with that. Masha'Allah. But I hope that
you guys have also been enjoying this particular
book this Ramadan.
And then
a couple of days ago we were treated
with another book of mine that came in
the mail which was very very very special
and it is this new one,
'Let it go,
learning the lesson of forgiveness'
with Mufti Mank
and
super excited to introduce this one to all
of you.
I enjoyed the writing process so much and
the illustrator just did a, just a gorgeous
job
of bringing out the emotions
of a child who just finds himself frustrated
just through daily daily activity, daily things that
happen to all of us. Just finding himself
getting more and more frustrated and just not
wanting to let go. As you can see,
poor little thing. He's got his
his big bag of grudges that he's carrying
with him all day.
And it was just such a pleasure to
work with Mufti Mank on this project and
it's his first children's book so we are
all super excited to launch that in a
couple of weeks time.
There will actually be a live reading of
this book on a day
on the 1 Nya'id platform. So do look
out for that, Insha'Allah. We'll try to link
to that. But,
that rounds off
my collection of the books that made the
most difference to my children this Ramadan. So
I hope that you will go to all
the links in the description, that you will
support all these amazing creators that we have
in our Ummah who are doing so much
to bring beautiful books to our children's lives.
And subhanAllah it really is touching for me
because the very reason I started writing was
because I couldn't
find these beautifully
created, beautifully written, beautifully illustrated, wonderfully produced books
that talked about my son's identity and, and
our way of life. And that's why I
got started. And I know that that's why
so many of you amazing authors who I
have talked about today
decided to start writing so that our children
could have something to have and to hold
and to be proud of. So please
do do support
all of the authors and all the publishers
who are putting these books out there. And
please, please
do not accept
any free pdfs
of any
any author's work
because the authors, the illustrators and the publishers
invest time and money into getting these books
out to you and to perfect
their craft.
And the last thing and the worst thing
that can happen is for your work to
be stolen and distributed. So please do not
do it yourself and never accept any free
PDFs. Always try to buy from the authors,
from the publishers, from local booksellers where you
can and support this industry so it can
keep growing.
And if if if
you would like to be one of the
authors of one of these amazing children's books
that literally transform our children's childhood, then just
remember that I do help
people like you to get their ideas together
and actually create an amazing story in my
children's book incubator. So if that's something that
sounds like you wanna explore, then please just
send me a message and let's chat. But
in the meantime, guys, I hope that you've
enjoyed this video.
I hope you get all these books and
I hope that they bring so much barakah
to your families inshallah. And I will see
you next time I do another one of
these rundowns and recaps inshallah. For now, please
accept all my salaams and my best wishes
for your Ramadan and your Eid.