We made these hand(y) review books for Hands Around the Library by Karen Leggett Abouraya with beautiful collage illustrations by Susan L. Roth, as part of Multicultural Children’s Book Day.
The story is about former children librarian Shaimaa Saad and library director, Ismail Serageldin, in February 2011, during the Egyptian upraising.
They both worked at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a major library and cultural center located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria, Egypt. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is trilingual, containing books in Classical Arabic, English, and French.
At the time, people were very unhappy with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. They held rallies, demonstrations and parades to voice their concerns.
The library staff was worried, since the library has been destroyed before. But on this day, people from within the parade broke out of the demonstrations and linked hands on the steps to protect the building.
The pages are stunning, showcasing different aspects of Egyptian style, including colorful quilts, hijbas and the clothing of the Muslims & Christians who held hands.
The back of the book contains a double-page photo spread with more information of the uprising and the library itself. There is a resource page, which I loved, since it included the Arabic words shown on the protest signs.
My favorite page was hands holding the Egyptian flag that was opened on the library steps.
This gave my daughter and I the inspiration to make these handy review books, to write down what we think about a book.
Supplies
- Various colored card stock
- Corner punch
- Glue stick
- Pen
- Scissors
- Stapler
My daughter started to make the review book by drawing an outline of her hand
She added a rectangular tab, for the staples later.
Next, my daughter cut out the hand. She used this hand to cut out as a template to make several others from different colors.
After all the hands were cut, she cut out all the tags for inside the review book. I typed them both up for her, in Arabic and English:
- TITLE OF BOOK / عنوان الكتاب
- THEME / موضوع الكتاب
- AUTHOR / مؤلف
- SETTING / إعداد
- FAVORITE EVENT / حدث المفضل
- RATING / تقييم
She made all the corners round on the slips of paper to make it look nicer.
To add them to the hands, my daughter added glue to the back of the pieces of paper and centered them on the hands.
The final step is to staple all the hands to each other.
We made a review book in English.
We also made a review book in Arabic. We made sure to start the book in the opposite direction and added our staples accordingly.
If you want to save some time, you can make the English and Arabic into one review book. Just start the English from one side and the Arabic from the other.
If you enjoyed making this handy craft, check out these others:
Be sure to stop by A Crafty Arab on Pinterest to see more tutorials that teach about the Arab world.
Eight years ago, I printed the 