After many months on planning and revising, my first-ever kids book is finally available to the public: “Aliyah’s First Ramadan.”

( This is the back cover- the front cover can be found on the right side bar)

This is a story of a young girl, Aliyah, and her first time fasting Ramadan. Conflict ensues when she is at school and the teacher yells, “SNACK TIME!”  Find out what happens in this fun rhyme book!

I’m really excited about this book because it’s so fun to read out loud to kids. The illustrations were wonderfully drawn by Br. Mohamed Qovaizi, and the final product really exceeded my expectations, walhamdulillah. I can honestly say I did my best to publish this book with ihsaan.

My appeal to you, the reader:

If you have kids of your own, younger siblings, nieces, nephews or even friends who have kids — buy this book and send it out to your email lists.

Any profits from this book will, inshaAllah, HELP FACILITATE HAJJ for my husband and I. So this project is extremely important for so many different reasons.

This book is for kids ages 4+

Two Formats of the book to chose from:

1. You can purchase the PDF online version of the book for $11.99 or

2. You can purchase the physical book to be shipped to your home for$19.99 – inshaAllah.

I really recommend the physical copy of the book, because it’s a lot funner for kids to actually hold and filp through the pages, not to mention it’s easier for reading at bed time .

May Allah ‘az wa jal accept this from me and from you, ameen.

Wassalamu Alaikum,

Shirien

A few days ago, I contacted a publisher to see if they would be interested in publishing a few books with me geared toward trying to create cultural-religious understanding at an early age.

The publisher expressed some interest in my ideas and said they are willing to work with me – but they wanted to see a summary of a story the next day.

I spend a good few hours writing my kids’ book and alhamdulillah, it came out quite cute. It’s a story about a girl named Aliyah and her first time fasting Ramadan- with illustrations it will be a perfect picture book for your elementary school child, inshaAllah.

I got to thinking ,and decided it would be really nice if we could also couple our kids’ show DVD with a nice book about “Abdullah” as well.

I found a great Muslim illustrator who will work within the guidelines of drawing, now all I needed was a story “Abdullah” would go through and I was set to write. He drew the picture that goes along with the post, and a few modifications to the beard, erase the ears and maybe the shape of the head – and we’ve got ourselves a “Abdullah” cartoon!

My husband suggested that I write the book about cheating — kids go through this at school all the time. So I agreed and started writing. After I had finished, I realize that a picture book that had to do with cheating may not be ideal. Afterall, who reads picture books? Three to seven-year-olds? They typically don’t have to deal with cheating at those ages.

And why teach them a bad concept they may not be aware of yet? Fail Shirien, Fail. Not to mention I used a stereotype in my story lol.

I spent a lot of time with it, so as to not go to waste, I’m posting the words to my would-be-book here, so that maybe your older kids might find amusement and lesson in it. Enjoy!

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Abdullah’s Test Isn’t His Best

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It’s  Abdullah’s first day of school

Prepare the books and colors too
–

“Hello there Abdullah”, his teacher said

Her name’s Mrs. Janet – dressed in red
-

History, Science and English too

But math was his favorite – the time just flew
–

The kids had so much fun as weeks went by

But now it was test time- Abdullah, don’t cry
–

“I’m no good at English!” Abdullah said aloud

“Just do your best” The teacher said proud
–

“If I make a bad grade, my mother might fuss”

“Maybe I should cheat,” he thought on the bus
–

Ali is smart but so is john

I’ll stick to the smartest – that kid from Taiwan
–

Exam day was here and he feels kind of nervous

After all, this test was Ginormous
–

I’ll look on his paper when she turns away

A, B, C, D the answers were displayed
–

“Time’s almost out,” the teacher explained

“Give us ten more minutes,” the students exclaimed

–

The test was over –” I hope I passed”

“Abdullah and Tim, can you stay after class?”
–

“I want to know what’s going on”

“Your answers are the same – and most are wrong”
–

“I swear I didn’t cheat! Tim said quite sad”

“I just couldn’t study, my tummy hurt bad”

–

“Abdullah, I expected more from you”

“I’m calling your mommy and daddy too”
–

“I’m in trouble now, ” Abdullah said worried

Time to go home and face the fury
–

“Abdullah, you have never done something so bad

We’re willing to forgive and not be so mad”
–

“I’m not good at English!” Abdullah exclaimed

“No one is perfect!” his mother explained
–

“Muslims are honest and we try our best”

“It is much better to do so-so than to cheat on a test”
–

The next day at school Mrs. Janet called him aside

“Abdullah, I’m willing to give you one more try”
–

“I really feel bad, I won’t let you down

I’ll study and study, even my nouns”
–

Two days went by and now it was time

Abdullah was confident he’d do just fine
–

He put all his studying into a rhyme

Nouns, verb, adjectives were now all defined
–

Nouns were persons, places or things

While verbs were actions like kids who would swing
–

The exam was over at a quarter past three

“Abdullah, Congrats! You got a B”

(www.abdullahkidshow.com)

A few months ago I was feeling a bit crafty. I hadn’t worked on a project in a long time “just for fun.” So I decided to go to the local arts and craft store to pick up some supplies.

As I was walking past the painting section, strolling past wood arts and gliding past the coloring section I was trying to decided what creative project will I invest the next few hours of my time on. I thought about a project I have been wanting to begin for about a year; an Islamic kids’ show.

“I’ll make a puppet,” I told my husband.

By the time I started, it was pretty late at night. My husband was fast asleep and I was working hard. About three hours past and I was finally done.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a creative, artsy person. In fact I’m just downright horrible at it all. And this puppet did not turn out any different.

There comes a time after you start working on something so intently that when you’re done and you sit back and see your final product, you realize the reality of what you just made- good or bad; only this time… it was bad.

So after seriously working on this thing for about three hours, I finally burst at laughing at the thought that I had “wasted my time.” It turned out to be very ghetto.

My husband woke up to my laughing and when he saw my final product he got terrified. “That thing is SCARY!”

I began taunting him and asking him if he’d make a video of my puppet. He finally gave in. We obviously went unscripted just playing around with the thing, and we decided to put it online because we had a lot of fun doing it.

We made two videos:

“Do something productive:”

“Abdullah works on a theme song”

We got people sending us messages and emails asking us to make more videos of “Abdullah.”

After seeing my poorly-made puppet I was not really intending on using him for anything other than scaring my husband from time to time. But after seeing peoples’ responses, we both agreed “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to get going.”

So that was the starting point for producing our Islamic kids’ show. We are hoping to get a DVD out by the end of the summer.

After six weeks of production and post-production we are happy to present episode 1 of “Abdullah.”

If you would like to see the FULL EPISODE, since it’s not on YouTube (over 10 minutes) go to www.abdullahkidshow.com

I’m the type of person who’s always on the lookout for the next project I want to complete. I find something I believe to be beneficial, fun and challenging all at the same time.

So what’s my next big project? Producing an Islamic kids show.

After doing research, I decided to see where I could cut costs for production. After seeing where all the costs would be coming from, I determined the best way to save money would be to make the puppets for my show myself. Typically, a custom-made puppet professionally done cost around $1,000.

I went to an arts and craft store yesterday to pick out my supplies and while my husband was asleep, I spent a good three hours working so hard and so diligently.

I had to figure out how to make the mouth part to move and somehow put it all together into the puppet. And after all the gluing, cutting and planning I take a good look at my final product and…. I BUST out laughing.

I couldn’t help it. The puppet was just so pathetic. My husband had awoken to my laughing and I showed him what I made — only for him to cover his eyes and tell me how scary it looked.

I asked him to take a picture of it and put it on his Facebook and his reply was, “I don’t want to for the safety of the people.”

Anyway, after much convincing he reluctantly decides to make a video for fun of my masterpiece and this was the result:

We decided to use this as a means to raising funds for our REAL kids show (which I’m happy to say will NOT have beat boxing, and will not feature a character such as Ghetto Abdullah).

Find out how you can invest in our project soon.

Let us know what your thoughts are.

I have an awesome team — hands-down. MashaAllah the sisters and brothers I work with are amazing. Everyone from my marketing group to the coordinators in each of the locations I work with, are awesome.

Lately, between scheduling, confirming venues and guiding people through how to promote the classes, we’ve come up with a brand-new site called bayyinahexperience.com. If you’ve ever taken a Bayyinah class it’s kind of hard to explain. You can’t really explain the feeling you get while you’re in class learning, nor can you really explain in detail what it’s all about; it’s one of those “you just have to be there” moments. Well we can’t guarantee that this site will give you the full “Bayyinah Experience” but it will sure attempt to give you a glimpse. We decided that video blogging was the way to go. Have the students video tape the fun, random, and intriguing moments that happen during class and even during the breaks. They can share their reflections, a story that happened to them on the way to the class, or anything related to what would normally be talked about or shown at a Bayyinah class.

Each location we conduct seminars in, we ask the coordinators to get someone to be in charge of getting footage. And the result is a student-run video blog dedicated to Bayyinah — otherwise known as bayyinahexperience.com.

I’m excited to see how this site is going to catch on as we go to more and more locations and add more and more classes to our curriculum. It should be pretty fun to come back to on a regular basis, inshaAllah.

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I have had such little time to post thoughts, reflections, media content on Egyptian Gumbo lately because I’ve been busy with other (greater, inshaAllah) things. I want to keep EG alive inshaAllah, and inshaAllah I will be able to do so once I graduate from LSU this May.

Between school and my work, I’m trying hard to keep with setting aside some time for my own personal development. Make dua for me!
EG