My First Arabic Alphabet Book


It's high time I review something else written in the 4th most popular language in the world.  [I'm still looking for a book at the DC Library in the #1 language (Chinese).] 

THREE PROS
*You and your kid might, just might, retain some Arabic from looking through this   
*Claims to offer the opportunity to "have fun learning the Arabic alphabet" -- perhaps this will be the case for a certain percentage of native-speaking families
*Siddiqa Juma was able to pay down a portion of her bills

THREE CONS 
*Yes, there are some balloons and things around the borders, but literally nothing else illustratively creative 
*Especially since the title is in English, you'd think they would have included a pronunciation guide for the non-intuitive symbols like Qaf 
*The explanatory page on the back inside cover chose format over spacing -- and it's so obvious since these are the only sentences in the whole thing

ONE DAD'S OPINION

Giving this effort a rating was as easy as alif, ba, ta.  There are no pictures outside of the alphabetic symbols themselves and there is no story connecting the letters to each other.  It's about as utilitarian as it gets.  All that said, there's nothing egregiously bad about it.  If at least one person in your child's life isn't versed in the language, it doesn't make a whole lot of practical sense.  [I gave it the bilingual tag just because I wanted to differentiate it from most items on this site.]  Looking at MFAAB from A to Z, I can't help but to give it a Donate. 

Buy / Borrow / DONATE / Destroy



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