The Arabic Quilt: An Immigrant Story

by Aya Khalil

Other authorsAnait Semirdzhyan (Illustrator)

Hardcover, 2020

Status

Available

Call number

PIC KHA

Collection

Children's Books

Genres

Children's Books

Publication

Tilbury House Publishers (2020), Edition: Illustrated, 36 pages

Description

The beautiful story of diversity follows a young girl named Kanzi whose most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one.

User reviews

LibraryThing member jbarr5

The Arabic Quilt: An Immigrant Story by Aya Khalil
Cute story of a girl who goes to school in a new town and some others tease her when her mother arrives with her lunch.
Her mom had called her by a different name. The teacher understands and decides to pitch in and help.
She comes up with an idea

for the girl to bring the quilt in from her grandmother. She then has each of the kids names written in Arabic and put them on fabric to be made into a quilt.
Awesome idea, we have made album quilts with all relatives signatures and dates on them. It's Priceless.
Love then what happens in the school classrooms.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

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LibraryThing member managedbybooks

This was really cute and I loved the illustration style! This was very wholesome and I loved the way this introduces different cultural aspects in ways that children can grasp and recognize.

LibraryThing member deslivres5

Lovely illustrated picture book about Kanzi, a recent Egyptian immigrant to the U.S. with her family.
She is starting third grade and comes upon some teasing issues on the first day of school.
How her teacher deals with the teasing and fosters kindness and pride of heritage is wonderful.

LibraryThing member wichitafriendsschool

A story of immigration. Kanzi's family has moved from Egypt to America, and on her first day in a new school, what she wants more than anything is to fit in. Maybe that's why she forgets to take the kofta sandwich her mother has made for her lunch, but that backfires when Mama shows up at school

with the sandwich. Mama wears a hijab and calls her daughter Habibti (dear one). When she leaves, the teasing starts. That night, Kanzi wraps herself in the beautiful Arabic quilt her teita (grandma) in Cairo gave her and writes a poem in Arabic about the quilt. Next day her teacher sees the poem and gets the entire class excited about creating a "quilt" (a paper collage) of student names in Arabic. In the end, Kanzi's most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one. This authentic story with beautiful illustrations includes a glossary of Arabic words and a presentation of Arabic letters with their phonetic English equivalents.

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LibraryThing member LibrarianRyan

This is a story about an Egyptian American girl who is going to an American school in the third grade for the first time. She becomes a little embarrassed by both her lunch and her language being something the kids don’t know. With the encouragement of the teacher, she uses her grandmother’s

quilt to help show everybody that language is unique, beautiful, amazing, and helps make everybody friendlier. The class, then learns to make all their names in Arabic and the teacher makes a paper quilt to show the rest of the school. The idea is so fantastic that a neighboring classroom does the same thing, but in Japanese script to match a student in that class. This story is lovely. In the US, it is rare for most schools to teach separate languages from early ages. But this book reminds all that language is a beautiful thing and just because it doesn’t sound American doesn’t mean it isn’t, as most American words derive from other languages.

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