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Inspirations for Children’s Books in Saudi Arabia: Part 5: In our children’s Hands!

by Nojood ALsudairi, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Happy Eid after a long fasting month!

In our previous four blog posts, we shared some of the children’s books that our students at King Abdulaziz University wrote, illustrated and designed. While working on their books, they were influenced by a variety of children’s books from Arabic countries and chose several to write about in each blog. Their books are going to be published by KAU’s publishing house. In this post we focus on other books that we published during the past three years.

Our first book that was published is Alifon Laisat fi Baqarah Bal fi Insan (A is Not Found in Cow, but in Human), written and illustrated by a group of 45 students. The idea began with the owner of a small publishing house suggesting collaboration between the Childhood Studies Department and Kadi w Ramadi publishing house. Thuraya Batarji, the young owner of Kadi w Ramadi, showed us a book she bought from Hong Kong called ABC Hong Kong’s Biggest Alphabet Book (ISBN9789889932626). This book was created by “lots and lots of good people supporting the child development center.” Continue reading

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Inspirations for Children’s Books in Saudi Arabia: Part 1, Objects and Feelings

by Nojood ALsudairi, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

The focus of this month’s blog is our work in writing and illustrating books for children in Saudi Arabia and on children’s books available from the Arab world. We want to share our process of developing picture books within a children’s literature course to be published for a wider audience. We believe that children’s literature courses and universities can play a role in helping countries develop books for children that reflect their language and culture. Continue reading