Breathe now, heh, heh, heh. Deeper. Expand your diaphram! Heh, heh, heh. There now, that’s better. Too too busy! Good news! King for a Day has been chosen by Kirkus as one of the best books of 2014!!! Yay!!! So now lesse, my little book King for a Day has been nominated for the Irma […]

Been being interviewed a lot these days! Here’s me on Radio Islam out of Chicago: https://soundcloud.com/radioislam1450/sat-oct-11-2014-topic-shaping-the-next-generation-islamic-resources-for-children And here’s the mayor of Edmonton reading Big Red Lollipop! http://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/city_organization/mayor/video-the-mayor-reads-eps2-big-red-lollipop.aspx?doAutoPlay=true  

What do you do when you get such a nice compliment that it kind of floors you? I spend a lot of time reminding myself to not take myself so darn seriously! And I am really fortunate that I have a family who keeps me grounded. I don’t want to ever become one of those […]

Apologies for the infrequency of my blog posts. This summer has been beyond hectic! And with all the work I’ve been doing, both writing, updating websites, preparing for conferences/workshops and preparing for Artist in Library residency that started today, well…things have been crazy. And blogging has not been a priority. I’m doing a workshop at […]

Last Saturday I was presenting at a one day workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called Muslim Journeys. It was a great opportunity and I had a wonderful time! It was well attended by educators from all over Wisconsin and even other states nearby! And one of the ladies exclaimed to me afterwards that she […]

Just warning  you, this will be a rambling post. One of my nieces (actually she’s my husband’s cousin’s daughter) just called me this afternoon, out of the blue, and excitedly thanked me for the Eid gift. She said she almost had tears in her eyes she was so happy with what I’d given her! This […]

It’s interesting how things can come together. You can be mulling something over, and then you get an email from some random reader talking about the issues of voice appropriation and then a day later you read an excellent column on the New York Times by Christopher Myers, the son of the impeccable Walter Dean […]

The biggest worry in being a ‘do gooder’ is not the risk of stopping the doing of good. It’s getting arrogant about it. Ooh, arrogance, that most insidious of faults! That creeps up on you till you really do believe you’re better than others. And in believing that, you prove that you’re not. Yeah, there’s […]

Got some more accolades for King for a Day! It got a fabulous review at Book Dragon , and this review really mentions what I was trying to do with the story! Shows that Malik, the main character (which means king in Arabic) has all the properties of a really good one! Loved this line: … By […]

When the writing gets better, the blog will suffer. I’m working hard these days, and it’s so exciting that it’s very hard to concentrate on writing something here. What I would suggest for all the new folks who’ve been joining the feed is to check out some of my older posts. I have a pretty […]