The publishing industry is fairly gloating over the explosion of new material produced during the continuing pandemic.
For first-time children’s author, Sara Sadik and her illustrator, Karine Jaber, both UAE-residents, it has been a chance to nurture a friendship that began when they met at their respective children’s nursery and then to develop ** The Extraordinary Pause, swapping ideas via Zoom chat about text and illustrations and even accepting stern admonition from their kids - the representatives of their target audience.
I gleaned this much from an interview Sadik gave to US blogger Brianna Peterson in which she revealed how, as a human rights lawyer she turned to writing as therapy while coping with her new born daughter’s congenital hip dysplasia which confined her to a Pavlik harness for eight months.
Another reason why Sadik must find it easy to ‘blur the lines’ between cultures and ethnic backgrounds is that although a Muslim, she was educated at a Catholic school and despite being a Lebanese-Palestinian she is married to a Syrian.
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Full disclosure: I accepted my review copy of The Extraordinary Pause from BooksGoSocial with reservations as it is better known as a review platform for independent writers rather than traditionally published authors.
After reading through the gratis pdf e-edition, I read the professional review at Kirkus which commends it as a “short picture book (that) speaks directly to young readers about the many life changes that happened as a result of Covid-19 in ways they will comprehend. Discussion questions at the book’s close encourage reflection …”
Last, I asked my step-daughter, Victoria and her boys, aged seven and three for their opinion.
A Sydney, Australia citizen,Victoria’s first question was about the intended market’s age range.
“Good question!”, I retorted. A mixed message is being delivered with Kirkus recommending ages four-six while different Amazon pages suggest age groups 3-10 years and baby-11 years.
Victoria added: “When we read the book to the boys my first thoughts were I didn't like how they were portraying Corona as a big scary bully … I do like the ending of the book though, reminding us it's nice to stop and appreciate all the small things and to be grateful for the extra time we have together. It was a nice way of trying to find the positives in such a negative time in our lives. Jacob (aged seven) liked the book and it got us talking about how he has been feeling during the last year and all the different emotions he's been feeling. Oscar (aged three) doesn't have a clue about the Corona virus or the pandemic, so the book was completely lost on him and went over his head and he was actually bored when I was reading it!”
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As the UAE now enjoys such good relations with Israel, and Sadik’s book is due for release in Spanish, Arabic, French, and German, I hope a Hebrew edition will not be far behind.
** The Extraordinary Pause, published by Eifrig, is available from Amazon:
Hardcover - $16.99; Paperback - $12.99; Kindle - $2.99/
NATALIE WOOD
11 SEPTEMBER 2021