Noor and Abdulla Al Owais here.
Today, we decided to do a joint post about an Emirati personality, the famous cartographer Shihab El Din Ahmed Ibn Majid who was born in 1432 AD in Julfar.
Ibn Majid
Author: Fatima Sharafeddine Illustrator: Hassan Amekan Published by: Kalimat (2020) ISBN: 9789948245629. Book borrowed from House of Wisdom Library. Book photos taken by reviewers.
Ibn Majid lived in the 15th century and he was born in Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates. However, back then it was not the called the UAE, and it was not called Ras Al Khaimah. His city was called Julfar. He was born in a family that loved him, and his father and grandfather were great and knowledgeable sailors. He loved going on ships with his father ever since he was a young boy. His father told him, when you get older, I will send you on a trip by yourself, so you have to learn from me. He learnt from his father how to navigate the sea, how to navigate from the stars, how to understand the waves’ movements and seasonal winds. When he was 17 years old, his father sent him on his own and he succeeded in his trip.
His father also told him he must learn how to read, and write, and learn mathematics, and because of that he loved reading. He also loved to learn, so he learned a lot of languages. He wrote more than 35 books on science, navigation, geography, and space. He said that because he was an Arab, he loved poetry and he wrote many, many poems. Some of the lines of his poetry were featured in this picture book.
He invented the compass and many kinds of astrolabes. He created lots of charts and maps, and he was a great navigator and sailor and was known to sail at night more than others. He was called the lion of the sea, and the prince of the sea, and other names. He was a great sailor, navigator, and cartographer.
My favorite illustration (Noor’s) is when his dad teaches him how to sail. The colors of the picture are very artistic and the shades of blue are spectacular. The illustration shows that the boat is leaning sideways and the boat is made of all different types of materials and colors. I also liked that there is a man poking his head out of the boat’s window.
We learnt a lot about Ibn Majid’s life, voyages and inventions, and we liked that the book was written as if he was talking to us. When the Expo was held in Dubai in 2020-2021, we also saw Ahmed bin Majid’s sculpture and details about him in one of the main pavilions.
For #WorldKidLit Wednesdays throughout the month of March, we have Emirati kid reviewers share their thoughts about the books that they read. In case you missed it, we had Abdulla Al Owais share his thoughts on a picture book entitled Two Great Leaders, Noor Al Owais shared her favorite Maitha Al Khayat picture books here, Noor Al Owais also shared about an anthology of amazing women from the Middle East, while Abdulla Al Owais featured Emirati/Arabic proverbs and sayings here.
About the Guest Contributors for #UAEReads:
Noor Al Owais is from Sharjah, the UAE and is a 5th grader at Ajman Academy. She likes to read, bake and cook. She loves figure skating and taekwondo and creating slime. She also likes spending time playing outside, gardening and imagining all sorts of things.
Abdulla Al Owais is from Sharjah in the UAE and he is a 3rd grader at Ajman Academy. He is very active and loves sports like football, taekwondo and tennis. You can find him building lego sets, or sketching in his sketch book. He enjoys reading and listening to his yoto.
About the Guest Editor/Curator for March 2024 [#UAEReads]:
Myra Garces-Bacsal has served as a teacher educator for 15 years and has led several research projects on reading and social emotional learning, diverse picturebooks and teacher practices, psychology of high creatives and exceptional people, culturally responsive and inclusive education. She is a quintessential lover and creator of booklists (see her Social and Emotional Learning bookshelf here and other publications below). Myra serves as the Assistant Dean for Research and Graduate Studies with the College of Education, UAE University. She is a self-proclaimed nerd who lives and breathes books and enjoys organizing events and festivals where fellow nerds converge and attempt to joyfully change the world.
Publications on booklists:
Garces-Bacsal, R. M., Alhosani, N. M., Elhoweris, H., Tupas, R. (2023). A diverse social and emotional learning booklist for gifted learners and advanced readers. Roeper Review, 45(1), 25-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2022.2145397
Garces-Bacsal, R. M., Alhosani, N. M., Elhoweris, H., Al Ghufli, H. T., AlOwais, N. M., Baja, E. S., & Tupas, R. (2022). Using diverse picturebooks for inclusive practices and transformative pedagogies. In M. Efstratopoulou (Ed.), Rethinking Inclusion and Transformation in Special Education (pp. 72-92). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-4680-5.ch005
Garces-Bacsal, R. M. (2021). Of grit and gumption, sass and verve: What gifted students can learn from multicultural picture book biographies. In S. R. Smith’s Handbook of giftedness and talent development in Australasian Pacific (pp. 431-453). Singapore: Springer International Handbooks of Education. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-981-13-3041-4_18
Garces-Bacsal, R. M. (2020). Diverse books for diverse children: Building an early childhood diverse booklist for social and emotional learning. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 22(1), 66-95. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798420901856
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 
I would love to read this book in English. There aren’t enough biographies for kids of accomplished people from around the world. Thanks for your review!
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