This is a great book about a grandmother sharing her culture and teaching her grand children about stories and traditions. They learn about the Arab cookies and make them with grandma. Is good for ages 4-8 makes kids want to know about their family's too.

I like this book. One element I really liked was in the back of the book there was an activity. The activity was instructions on how to make a boat out of paper like the grandmother had showed her granddaughters earlier in the book. I also liked that real pictures of their actual family were used. Some pictures were current and others were old family photographs of the parents or grandparents. Using real pictures made it a lot more relatable than if illustrations had been used. The main idea of this book is families may differ but at the same time, they are the same in that they value each other. ( )

I thought this was an interesting book. I like how the book is about a girl’s grandma that if from another country and it is almost like a family interview. I thought the text was intriguing because there were mixed in Arabic vocab within the English words. One of the words discussed was a hamsa, which is explained to be good luck. The book was well written and appropriate for a younger reader. I thought that it was a great idea to have a glossary at the end of the book for readers to go back to remember newer words from another culture. The font size was nice and big to read easily. The illustrations were of the family, which was interactive because as a reader it felt like the grandmother was really telling me her story. There were pictures from living in Egypt and how there is a difference from living in the United States. Along with this, the grandmother had artifacts from the giant pyramids, water jug used for deserts, to a blue clay hamsa. The picture show how people in the grandmother’s culture dressing like, compared to what people would typically wear in America. Through pictures it was easy for me as the reader to visible see a difference from the two cultures along with reading and learning about the differences. The book did a great job demonstrating that it is great to have more than more culture and that people should celebrate their heritage. Great read overall. ( )

Grandma tells the grandkids about the old country (Egypt). They learn to dance, make paper boats, bake cookies and see artifacts (like a cool toy mosque that plays all five calls to prayer.) Includes historical photos.

Ages: 3-7
Source: Tacoma Public Library

I liked this book. I enjoyed the fact that real pictures of the family were used instead of drawn illustrations. What was even better was that the picture showed exactly what was going on in relation to the text so that you got a real understanding of what they were talking about. The author used textual features in a great way. The author uses different sizes to emphasize certain things and I really think this is effective for students because it will stand out to them. Also, I loved that the captions explained exactly what was going on in certain pictures. For example, there was a picture of the family and underneath the picture they listed the names of who was in the picture. I also like this book because it is interactive. There was a page in the book that had activities for children to do where they made something out of paper. In the back of the book there was a "special words & all about my family" section. I like this because it tells you how you can get to know your roots by interviewing your family, looking at family albums, and looking at your family tree. I also think the "special words" section is great because the author lists words of the Muslim culture and defines them. For example, hejab, koran, and mosque are all defined so we know what they are.

The big message for this story is to embrace your culture and always remember your roots. In the story, the author says, "Children are proud to be able to write and read in both English and Arabic." So, the family is not only working with the children to learn English, but they are also teaching them Arabic and keep up traditions within their culture. I think this says a lot about students from other countries today, coming to the United States. It is important to not only learn the English language, but to also keep up with your culture whether it is the language, traditions, or both. ( )