Diverse Books - Near East/Levant/Arabian Peninsula Picture Books

Ibn Battuta recalls his amazing journey and the fascinating people, cultures, and places he encountered. He traveled extensively, throughout Islamic lands and beyond -- from the Middle East to Africa to Europe to Asia nearly 700 years ago.

While Nora waits for the couscous her father is cooking to be finished, he tells her a story about his youth in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Includes author's note and glossary.

An Arab girl of the Sahara who wants to wear a malafa, the veiled dress worn by her mother and older sister, learns that the garment represents beauty, mystery, tradition, belonging, and faith.

Little Parisa-Farsi, left alone after an earthquake demolishes her home of Bam, Iran, inspires the animals around her to put aside their differences and revel in the simple delights that unite them.

After showing kindness to a strange old woman, Shiraz receives the gift of beauty but her lazy and unkind stepsister, Nargues, suffers a less pleasant fate in this adaptation of the Grimm's fairy tale, Mother Hulda, reset in Tehran, Iran.

In simple rhyming text a young Muslim girl and her family guide the reader through the traditions and colors of Islam.

When Jouha counts the ten donkeys carrying his dates to market, he repeatedly forgets to count the one he is riding on, causing him great consternation. Includes numbers written out in Arabic and in English transliteration, as well as the numerals one through ten, and a note on the origins and other versions of the story.

Alia Muhammad Baker is a librarian in Basra, Iraq. For fourteen years, her library has been a meeting place for those who love books. Until now. Now war has come, and Alia fears that the library--along with the thirty thousand books within it--will be destroyed forever. In a war-stricken country where civilians--especially women--have little power, this true story about a librarian's struggle to save her community's priceless collection of books reminds...

An East Indian American daughter pleads with her mother to be allowed to wear one of her mother's colorful saris in honor of her seventh birthday.

Moses Feldman and Mohammed Hassan both live on Flatbush Avenue, but when they meet at the grocery store they quickly become best friends, sharing a picnic while their families prepare for the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Ramadan.