By S. K. Ali, Aisha Saeed
Short stories, a poem, and a comic about Eid, by fifteen Muslim writers, for a child who reads on their own.
Fifteen writers, fifteen Eids. A boy stuck at the mall with his family. A girl made to wear a dress she hates. A new baby sister in the house. Someone spending the day far from the people they'd want around them. There's a poem in here, one chapter is told as a comic, and Sara Alfageeh's drawings run throughout. S. K. Ali and Aisha Saeed edited it, and the contributors are names a lot of families already have on the shelf: G. Willow Wilson, Hena Khan, Hanna Alkaf, Rukhsana Khan, Randa Abdel-Fattah, and more. No plot connects the stories. What they share is the day itself, Eid, arriving fifteen different ways in fifteen different homes.
This is the one for an older reader, eight and up, who's past picture books. Because it's short stories, it's easy to pick up and put down: one before bed, then back to it next week, which suits a child who doesn't want to start a whole novel. The range is real. Different countries, different kinds of family, different amounts of religion in the house, some characters thrilled about Eid and some dreading a scratchy dress. And every writer here is Muslim, so nothing is written to be explained to an outsider. They're telling stories about a holiday they know, the way you'd write about Christmas morning without stopping to define Christmas. A Muslim child will likely find a version of their own Eid somewhere in the fifteen, and plenty that look nothing like it. For any other child, it's fifteen good stories about a big, happy day.