By H. A. Rey, Hena Khan
George keeps his friend Kareem company through Ramadan — the fasting, the sunset iftar, the giving, and Eid — in a short tabbed board book.
It's the first day of Ramadan and George is over at his friend Kareem's house. Kareem is old enough to try his first fast this year, so George stays by him through a long, hungry day — which, for a monkey surrounded by food he can't touch, is its own kind of trial. At sunset the whole family breaks the fast together and George finally gets to taste everything. He helps fill baskets of food to give away to people who need them. He heads out with the man in the yellow hat to watch for the crescent moon that closes the month. And then it's Eid, and George has made it through his first Ramadan.
The pull is simple: your child already loves George, so the door opens itself. A three-year-old will sit for this because the monkey is in it, and that's a real head start over any book they have no reason to pick up. The tabs down the side let small hands find their own page, and the whole thing is short enough for a wriggly toddler. Hena Khan, who wrote it, is a Pakistani-American Muslim mother, so the details of the day ring true. What you get is the shape of Ramadan — the hunger, the meal at sunset, the giving, the moon, the party — sized for a preschooler to hold. What you don't get is the why. The word Muslim isn't in the book, and neither is God. It shows what the family does. It doesn't tell you why they do it.