Recently I was approached by a thoughtful teacher librarian who questioned the addition of this book on my Muslim booklist: The teacher librarian wrote: “I am a public school librarian in a diverse, growing community. We have recently seen an increase in our immigrant/refugee population, particularly of students whose families are from Arab or Middle […]

There is helping and there is hindering. Hindering is where you’re actually handicapping the person you think you’re helping so that they’ll never learn the skills necessary to be able to stand on their own. Helping is when you see someone being overwhelmed, and you step in, strategically! It’s very important. You never know when […]

There’s an OISE article about how anthropomorphic animal stories are not as effective at conveying lessons as stories with real children in them. https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/About_OISE/OISE_study_shows_kids_learn_more_effectively_from_stories_with_humans_than_with_human-like_animals.html I am not surprised by these findings. The study was done on pre-schoolers. That age is not conducive to ambiguity. You need to spell it out. And yet so many parents […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about addiction these days. It’s all over the news, the opioid epidemic and it’s starting to hit Toronto, where I live. Two eighteen year old girls recently went into a building downtown and overdosed in a stairwell. There was a fascinating study done about cocaine addiction. They had this rat […]

I’m so honored to be presenting at the International Research into Children’s Literature conference this year! The venue for this international academically oriented conference changes every two years. This year it’s in Toronto and they invited me to be on a panel with some other authors. The thing is, even though it’s tempting to just […]

Met a very interesting librarian this week. He spoke of how the librarians who are the most gung ho about bringing diversity and inclusion to their schools are often the ones who were ‘outsiders’ when they were growing up. I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘outsiders’ these days. From S. E. Hinton’s iconic novel to […]

In Islam we believe that when someone dies the angels go around recording ‘witness statements’ from others on what the person was really like. There’s a sentiment I remember reading in Western fiction that echoes this idea, referring to not speaking ill of the dead. It’s best to just keep quiet if you didn’t like […]

I think the most charming situation I’ve ever encountered has to do with people trying to outdo each other in politeness! I mean talk about rivalry! That’s something to strive for! I went to a school recently, they were having a multicultural festival and I guess I was part of it. At the beginning, when […]

I was talking to my mom recently and she said something that surprised me. She said that you can tell when God is testing you versus punishing you based on your own behavior. She said during a trial, you are behaving correctly, within God’s parameters, you’re not doing anything wrong but you’re still not getting […]

Just got back from three days presenting in Kingston, Ontario, and I’m feeling a good kind of tired. It’s the kind of tired when you know you’ve given it your all, and you have high hopes that you changed a few minds and did some good. I visited six schools, in three days, did eight […]