Meet Yasmin by Saadia Faruqi and Hatem Aly
Hello, Saadia Faruqi! Thank you so much for celebrating Meet
Yasmin! with me today. How will you celebrate Yasmin’s book birthday tomorrow?
Saadia: It’s strange to be
celebrating a character’s birthday, but it somehow feels natural because Yasmin
has become such a big part of my family! We often talk about how Yasmin would
do something or what she would say in a certain situation. I’m planning on a
cake with her picture on it, and some family time with my children reading out
aloud from Meet Yasmin! And I may treat myself with a visit to the spa just to
give myself a pat on the back!
Yasmin is an explorer, a builder, a painter and a
fashionista. What else does she love doing on her own and with her family?
Saadia: Yasmin is modeled after my
own daughter, who is a little older than Yasmin now. But she’s also her own
person, who has these little qualities that are just so uniquely Yasmin! She
loves reading with her Baba, and working on crafts projects with her
grandparents. She really enjoys going out with her Mama, very similar to the
way my daughter and I have girls’ day when we go shopping and then a nice lunch
somewhere. Yasmin is also a very curious child so she likes to know how things
work and how to fix things that are broken. You see some of that in Yasmin the
Fashionista.
Please finish these sentence
starters:
Yasmin’s family
is hard working, supportive and loving… just like every other American family.
Part of the reason I wrote Meet Yasmin! is to showcase a normal American
family, to remind readers that even though some moms may cover their heads, or
some dads may have beards, or some families may include grandparents, they are
all essentially the same. American is no one way of living… some people wear
different sorts of clothes, speak in a different language, or eat different
foods, they are still the same as everyone else.
Hatem Aly’s illustrations are beyond my expectations! They bring Yasmin and her
family to life in a way that is spectacular! He really allows me to expand what
I’m saying because of the emotion and movement in every illustration. I’m very
lucky to have him on my team.
Story is essential
to life. Without storytelling we would probably not have survived as humans. We
need stories to teach us about the past, and to share traditions with each other,
and even sometimes predict the future. It’s such a powerful tool, which is why
I’m a writer.
Mr. Schu, you should have asked me why I started writing for kids after so many years as
an adult fiction and essay writer. Yasmin started out as a picture book
manuscript about a little girl who makes a map of her neighborhood and then
uses it when she gets lost. After multiple edits she morphed into an older girl
with a family and a life in school and in multiple stories we see today.
Somewhere along the way I realized that although writing for adults was
exciting, there was nothing more exciting than writing for a child who may see
herself in the pages of a book for the first time! Our youngest readers are so
eager to read stories that reflect their experiences, and I thought that should
definitely extend all the way to the roots of the family and where you are from
and everything that makes up a first generation American child from an
immigrant family.
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