RTL: A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee

  السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

Book Title: A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee
Author: Chris Van Dusen
Islamically Appropriate?: No
Genre: Fiction
Book Format: Picture Book
Age Group: 4-8
Book Review: Mr. Magee decides to take his little dog on a camping trip. He tells his dog about the wonderful adventures to be had while camping but their trip goes suddenly array when a near-sighted (and far-sighted) bear smells the marshmallows they cooked over the fire before going to bed. In its attempt to get to the nice smell, the bear accidentally unhitches the camping trailer from the car, sending both rolling down the hill in opposite directions. The trailer (in which Mr. Magee and his dog are sleeping) ends up falling into the water and is prevented from going over the edge of a waterfall by a large rock. The same bear with poor eye sight unintentionally ends up fishing Mr. Magee and his dog out of the water. 

The story is long and it rhymes (the entire story) so this is definitely a story for older children. The illustrations are attractive and the story is funny. The aspects of the story I am unsure about are the dog and a reference to some presidents of the States. For these reasons, I have rated the book as Inappropriate for Muslim children...waallaahu a'lam.

Until the next read insha'Allaah....

RTL: Forest

  السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

Book Title: Forest
Author: Laura Goodwin
Islamically Appropriate?: PD (Parent Decision)
Genre: Fiction
Book Format: Beginning Chapter Book
Age Group: 4-8
Book Review: This is a beginning chapter book for students who are becoming or already are independent readers. The text level supports independent reading at this age and provides enough new, slightly challenging words so that the reader does not become bored and can also feel a sense of advancing in their ability as a reader. 

In this story, a little girl and her mother find a baby fawn in the forest near their farm. They hear the baby fawn call for its mother throughout the day. When nightfall comes and the mother deer has not returned for her fawn, the family decides to go back to the forest to care for the baby fawn overnight so it will no die. The little girl wants to keep the baby fawn as a pet but the father tells the girl that a wild animal is not theirs to keep and that tomorrow they will call a facility that cares for wild animals.

In a few places in the text the sound the animals makes as it calls for its mother is written in as part of the story. As Ibn Taymiyyah said it is not that humans should imitate the sound of animals (still unable to find that reference in English unfortunately), perhaps children can be asked not to read those lines of text or if you own the book, you can use a marker to colour over the words. 

The last chapter is the reason this book has been given the rating of PD (parent decision). The little girl asks if she can stay up to help feed the fawn throughout the night with her parents and they tell her no (the parents intend to take turns getting up throughout the night to bottle feed the fawn). They tell her to go to bed, which she does, but the reader soon learns that the little girl intentionally lays awake in bed waiting until her parents go to sleep and then she sneaks back downstairs to talk with the fawn and ends up falling asleep next to it.


Might this aide in teaching children to disobey their parents when Allaah has said that we are to be good and dutiful to our parents?

وَوَصَّيْنَا الْإِنسَانَ بِوَالِدَيْهِ حُسْنًا

And We have enjoined on man to be good and dutiful to his parents...

 

{Surah Al-Ankaboot (29): 8}

 Until the next read insha'Allaah....