Why Would An Adult Author And Journalist Decide To Write A Series Of Books For Kids?

Saadia Faruqi is a Pakistani-American author who decided to step up her interfaith writing after 9/11. She wrote journalism, op-eds, and an acclaimed book of short stories. Then she had kids, and she noticed an issue: “Here we are in multicultural America, where in many cities, including my own hometown of Houston, brown and black is the majority skin color, and yet an overwhelming percentage of children’s books feature white kids. There were certainly not any Muslim or South Asian main characters in early readers, and that’s the age kids are just learning their own identities and deciding if they love reading or hate it.” So, she thought, why not help change that?