Ramadan

Ghazi, Suhaib Hamid. Ramadan New York: Holiday House, 1996.
(http://www.holidayhouse.com/HH/details.cfm?id=164)

This story is about a boy named Hakeem who is Muslim. Much attention is paid throughout the story to the history of the Islamic faith, what it means and the significance of Ramadan to Muslims.

This illustrations of this book again portray the Muslim faith in a whimsical fashion with the pictures appearing dreamlike. Another thing that I did not like about this book is that it takes non-fictional information about Ramadan and tries to weave it into a fictional story by having a young, male narrator, named Hakeem, take the reader through the information about Ramadan.

I question the function of this book because it seems like the information is less heartfelt and less enjoyable as a fictional text; also I feel that by portraying Ramadan fictionally detracts from the importance of the holiday to a faith that readers who are not Muslim. I also think it is interesting that other than the biographical information offered at the end of the text, there is no information about the author either on a website of his own or on the publisher's website. Although Suhaib Hamid Ghazi wrote this book as one third a series known as The Prophets of Allah and has spent time in Saudi Arabia (the home of Mecca), he is essentially a financial advisor for American Express which leads me to questions why he would have been asked to author a book about the Muslim holiday Ramadan.