Dar Al Maaref Bookshop Co Publishers
Dar Al Maaref Bookshop Publishers aim to educate kids from all over the world through interactive books with a fun twist book, we produce simply not just a book.
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Dar Almaaref for Publishing
The oldest national organization for publishing since 1890 in Middle East. We had the prize of "The best publisher 2019-2020",The owner of October Magazine.
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Promoted Content
The Emerald Garden
by Raja Malah
On every day off, the child – the central character – visits his grandmother who lives in her old house amidst a flower garden at the foot of a mountain. The book describes one of those visits so we can better understand the grandmother's personality, who is full of love and tenderness. We experience this visit through the child's narration of the details as he relates all the beautiful moments rooted in his heart and memory with great love and appreciation for his grandmother. Days, months and years pass by – the wheel of life turns and the grandson becomes a father, then a grandfather. One day he decides to visit his grandmother's house with his grandchildren. The house had been transformed into a public park as per his grandmother’s wishes, as a gift to the people of the neighbourhood and their children, to enjoy the tranquillity and beauty of that garden she loved and cared for her whole life. During that nostalgic visit, reality mixes with imagination and the present with the man’s past and he finds himself facing strange manifestations: the garden sparkles with precious stones and the fig tree near his heart bears emeralds, which surprises him, as if he is prey to the hallucination of imagination, only to discover the name chosen by the mayor for his grandmother's garden – a name that reinforces his vision of "Emerald Garden". Age Range: 10+ years
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Fiction2022My Date With the Light
by Raja Malah
The character of the novel “My Date with the Light” was born with a rare disease that gradually eliminates her sense of sight. From an early age, she realized that she was in a struggle with time and loss. Who said that this little girl in that remote village between its harsh mountains and deep valleys will one day be able to turn her date with darkness into a date with light, insight, and hope? She left her village in search of scientific horizons and dreamy expanses. Twenty years later, she decided to return to her hometown, believing in her role in assisting the children of her village. In her cabin, between the night silence and train whistles, she begins to tell her life story so we can learn about the details of her childhood, her handicap, her family, her village that languishes in poverty and destitution... To witness how she was finally able to make her way towards achieving her dream with rare courage, and touch the light of success, despite losing sight. Age Range: 9-12 years
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Children's & YAI Am Not Alone
by Ramy Tawil
Maher realizes one day he is an only child with no siblings. He starts to feel a bit lonely, and wishes he had siblings - like his friends and cousins. Luckily, his toys are here and now it’s time to show Maher what it means to be surrounded with brothers and sisters.It’s a heartwarming story that shows how rich and powerful the imagination of an only child can be.
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Children's & YAWhat's On Your Face?
by Fatima Jamal Abdullah
Amin, a little boy, is the narrator of this story. Ill with the vitiligo disease, which causes his skin to have large white stains, Amin struggles in school.As Amin describes his daily challenges, young readers gain a better understanding of his behaviors and learn valuable lessons about tolerance and acceptance. As his parents say, what matters is that he has a white heart, pure and kind
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Children's & YAA Paper Tale
by Takla Oubada
The white paper felt sad for being left blank. But its feelings changed when it saw the writer’s hand waking the sleeping pen up, and drawing letters and words on its white page.
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Children's & YAI Am Special
by Nadine Kamal Karrit
You may be both different and the same as all the other children.This is what this book tackling the Down Syndrome explains, through the story of a child who just wants to be friends with everybody else.
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Fiction2022Rejoice, My Heart
by Alawiya Sobh
Ghassan, a musician and Oud player, leaves for New York, fleeing the Lebanese civil war after his extremist bother, Afif, murdered his older and pacifist brother Jamal, who sought to open the door to Muslim-Christian dialogue. In New York, Ghassan struggles to erase all his memories but his thoughts would always bring him back to his hometown, Dar El Ezz, as it was long before the war. ///Soon, he falls in love with and marries Kristin, becomes more emotionally stable, and embraces American culture. But when he must return to Lebanon for his father’s funeral, nostalgia for his homeland and a series of events force Ghassan to face a convergence of two cultures. ///“Efrah Ya Qalbi” (Rejoice, My Heart!) is a novel about love, music, identity, one’s sense of belonging, brotherly conflicts, and the diaspora. It dives into the lives, troubles, and dilemmas of the characters. ///The stories intertwine amid a fascinating narrative, thus revealing the turmoil and troubles of the Lebanese community torn by wars and outbursts. The novel also addresses the relationship between the East and the West, where struggling and cracked identities are silenced and offers a new vision through analysis and narration.
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The Beast and the Blackberry
by Naseeba Alozaibi
A novel for young readers that explores a strange, miraculous world combining reality and myth, the book mainly focuses on the character of a beast and the physical and spiritual transformations between his huge, strong body and a blackberry plant. The focus turns to the relationship between the beast and the orphan child Salma, dealing with the love between them, which does its magic until he becomes a tree. His past is then revealed, including his suffering at the hands of humans, and how his transformations played a role in healing his wounds and grief, bringing him back to a pure, benevolent truth. Age Range: 10+ years
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Children's & YAAugust 2013Ghadi & Rawan
by Fatima Sharafeddine and Samar Mahfouz Barraj
Ghadi is a young teenager of Lebanese origin, living in Brussels. Like so many Lebanese emigrants, Ghadi’s family comes to Lebanon during the summer holidays. Ghadi spends his summer with his cousin and friends in the family’s mountain house, among whom Rawan, the daughter of his grand-parent’s neighbors. Ghadi and Rawan are very close friends, and at the end of summer, when each of them goes their separate ways, they stay in touch via e-mail. The novel is built on their correspondence. From the moment the plane lands, Ghadi misses Lebanon and his friends, dreaming of the next summer. He has many friends at school, but he is also bullied by an older boy. Rawan, with her sense of humor and creativity is quite popular among her friends, and that year decides to run for the elections of the students’ representatives. Tensions at home are nevertheless more and more palpable, as Rawan’s father regularly comes home in a very bad temper. Rawan is convinced that her parents are on the verge of divorce. Having overheard a phone conversation, she also believes that her father has a lover. This situation is distressing, and Rawan has trouble concentrating at school. She feels lonely, and her anxiety pushes her away even from her closest friends. Meanwhile, in Brussels, Ghadi gets mixed up in drugs, unwillingly, and falls under the power of the boy who’s been bullying him. Each on their own, Rawan and Ghadi will find ways out of their problems, and will learn and grow from their experiences, while their friendship strengthens. With this novel for young adolescents (13 year olds), the two authors tackle issues that are central in the lives of young teens all over the world. The relationship to family members, to friends and classmates, drugs and violence, unemployment, racism, exile, identity and roots, are all issues that are touched upon in the novel.
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Children's & YAFebruary 2014Red Line
by Samar Mahfouz BarrajIllustrated By: Mona Yakzan and Mira El-Myr
Mazen, a young boy, is one day surprised by their neighbor Bassam shouting with anger in the street “My parking spot is a red line!” Does this mean he plans to paint the street red, asks Mazen to his mother? The mother explains to Mazen that what Bassam means is simply that no one is to park in his place. The notion is still vague to Mazen: Why red? Does it have anything to do with red traffic lights? The mother tries again “When something is a red line, it means that it is off limits to others”. In this illustrated album, Samar Barraj boldly addresses the delicate issue of child sexual abuse. Acknowledging the complexity of the boundary it tackles, the book determines it through examples the mother and child raise in their conversation. Mazen’s spontaneous remarks and comments point out the difficulty of defining this red line, and make of the book a realistic example of such a conversation. The illustrations develop the notion further, by representing situations in which the red line might be crossed – one may be on his bicycle, at his computer, or approached by a respectable-looking old man in the street. The body parts are not named, but are represented in a naïve drawing Mazen made, though the text insists on the importance of preserving the body as a whole. The colorful images and constant presence of the mother and parents make of the book a reassuring experience despite the gravity of the topic.
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Fiction2020A Laughing Sun
by Bayan Al Safadi
These poetic tales for children address things around us such as the wall, the stone, the ear, the river, and others, humanize them, and present them as free verse poetry. It also includes an audio CD containing song versions of the tales, all of which are loaded with pedagogical, aesthetic, and humanitarian messages. The importance of “A Laughing Sun” stems from its adoption of the poetic tale in most poems. It carries implications for reverence of science, arts, freedom, and human diversity, and highlights the beauty of nature and the protection of the environment. The poems are replete with a sense of cheerfulness and humor, and the collection focuses on the imagination and stimulates both scientific and creative thinking.
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Fiction2021The Mystery of the Glass Ball
by Maria Dadouch
Ghassan Al Ghurairi had to accompany his old grandfather to the Leewy Museum in the middle of the desert. They are attending a ceremony honoring his grandfather, who spent his entire life in service of the desert. As they head to their destination onboard an ancient train, Ghassan came across a conspiracy plotted by the criminal Aqrabawi and his bald friend— disguised as two elderly women—to poison the oasis’s water supply. In place of the ecological life in the desert, they want to make way for an international resort and take over the place. Although Ghassan doesn’t mean to confront this conspiracy alone, he finds himself embroiled face-to-face with the criminals. Fortunately for him, a girl appears at his side to help. Sophia Al-Adnani from Chiparazumpia is also heading with her grandfather and his great eco-friendly invention, the glass ball, to the Leewy Museum, where her grandfather is to be honored. The two children are able to hold off the criminals initially, but not for long, as Aqrabawi and his friend soon reappear—this time deadest on revenge against the two children. Ghassan and Sophia resist in the face of intimidation and threats, and, using clever intrigue, they manage to disarm the conspirators and escape seconds before the desert guards arrive and arrest the criminals.
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FictionJanuary 2016The Autumn of Innocence
by Abbas Beydoun
In his novel, The Autumn of Innocence, prominent Lebanese poet and novelist Abbas Beydoun artfully weaves a tragic story of a father-son relationship that ends disastrously with the son's violent death. This story unfolds along with the Arab Spring movement and explores the motivations behind religious extremism and questions cultural constructs of masculinity. The novel opens with a letter from Ghassan to his cousin, describing how his father Massoud strangled his mother to death when Ghassan was just three years old. Afterward, Massoud flees the village in southern Lebanon. For 18 years, no one hears from him, and Ghassan grows up stigmatized by his father's violent crime. In time, Ghassan's aunt Bushra-Massoud's sister-makes a confession: She encouraged Massoud to kill his wife, believing that his wife's low socioeconomic status would bring embarrassment to their wealthy family. Bushra also reveals that Massoud was driven to kill his wife because he feared that she would tell someone that he was impotent, undermining his sense of manhood and social status. Meanwhile, Massoud has moved to southern Syria, where he remarried and had two more sons. During the Arab Spring, the militant groups fighting the Syrian regime transform him into a religious extremist. In the second half of the novel, Massoud return to the village in southern Lebanon. He brings with him a group of men. Together they seize control of the village and terrorize its inhabitants. After killing the dogs, they begin murdering the villagers in the name of religion. One of Ghassan's friends is among the victims, and Massoud also threatens his family. Ghassan decides that he must kill his father, avenging the death of his friend and the deaths of the other villagers. In the end, he fails and is beheaded by Bushra's son, his cousin, who is has joined Massoud's thugs. Beydoun captures the shifting points of view in a family shattered by the tyranny of normative masculinity and the resulting violence. The victims are women, of course, but also the men like Ghassan who reject these social and cultural expectations. The novel also portrays the rise of religious extremism and the terrorism it can inspire, which wreaks havoc on the lives of ordinary people. Beydoun's engaging language imbues the characters and the places they inhabit with a vibrancy and vitality that transcends the difficult subject matter.
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Yalda’s Night
by Ghada Al-Absi
The life of poet Hafez Al-Shirazi forms the background from which this novel draws its great ideas about life, love and poetry. And although this book is based on the visions of this great poet, it is not a heterosexual biography of his life but rather an imagined novel inspired by his poetry. The events of the novel take place in one night when Hafez dies, only to be born again. Throughout the long night, the author reviews stories, conflicts and milestone events in history, and Hafez has the chance to meet the poles of Sufi love in multiple chronological paths within the novel. He contemplates the black death and is defeated by the Farsi language with his early failures in poetry, but he finds salvation in the Arabic language by memorising the entire Qur’an. As a result, Shams Al-Din chooses another name inspired by him: Hafez, who the world will embrace until the Shiraz baker becomes a minister, on a human journey in which the Shirazi tests and loses everything successively.
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Children's & YAAugust 2017I Have Two Homes Instead of One
by Lorka SbeityIllustrated By: Mona Yakzan
“I am happy now, I have two homes instead of one. I visit my father in the village during the weekend. My mom reads me bedtime stories And I will not see her sad anymore.” The story targets a big part of any community nowadays; it deals with divorce from the children’s perspective. It shows the separation’s psychological damages on the child if not well approached. It facilitates the smooth and healthy acceptance of divorce for both parents and children.
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Children's & YAMay 2019Mila's Pearl
by Fatima Sharafeddine
A painful incident at school leads Mila to take a very important but secret decision, which is to lose her excess weight. She is so determined to accomplish her goal in order to prove to everyone, especially those who bully her, that she is totally capable of it. Mila gets carried away with her goal to the extent of reaching the state of Anorexia. She denies having a problem for the longest time, until she realizes that her condition has become life threatening. This YA novel deals with the issue of Anorexia, an eating disorder that is becoming more common in many modern cities of our days. The author built the character of Mila based on several testimonies of teen agers and their accounts on their sufferings with Anorexia. Is it true that once Anorexic, always Anorexic? Mila will find out the hard way.
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An Artist's Journey
by Mizouni Bannani
‘An Artist’s Journey’ emphasises the values of loyalty and belonging to one’s homeland, speaking to teens in an eloquent and beautiful language while raising several contemporary issues. These include illegal immigration and problems faced by expatriates in their lives, as well as the value of the artist in society and the importance of practicing arts to cultivate souls and encourage cultural integration. It’s an interesting story told by an enlightened grandmother in the Hakawati style. She uses sound effects, masks and drawing tools while narrating the tale, utilising stimulating methods between one chapter and another to make the novel a story that can be heard, drawn and represented. The story speaks to the reader from the perspective of small and colourful birds, to provide them with a miniature example of a desired civic life in our Arab Islamic societies based on the values of justice, equality, respect for the supremacy of law, tolerance, love, cooperation, national identity, and defending the homeland. This is in addition to different forms of democracy such as consultation, elections, dialogue and debate, to resolve disputes and reject violence and extremism. The book relies on the elegance and aesthetics of expression to connect with a young audience and is rich in imagery and metaphorical expression, proceeding slowly but excitingly, and is infused with imagination. The use of language is similarly inspired. In the book, birds can speak as they fly across and through the world, taking readers on a journey with wings of imagination; they are no longer just readers, but participants too. This work encourages educators and pedagogists in general to teach in different ways, such as using art to encourage children to pursue knowledge, acquire life skills and develop their intelligence. Age Range: 9+ years
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Fiction2020Over the Jumhuriya Bridge
by Shahad Al Rawi
This novel, a bestseller in Baghdad, starts with the first two American tanks that crossed over the Jumhuriya Bridge into the heart of Baghdad in 2003, as the narrator watches events unfold from her grandfather’s house at the riverfront. That’s when her emigration journey begins, setting her on a path to experience both love and death away from her country. After her mother passes away, her father resorts to quantum physics in an attempt to interpret the meaning of existence, while the nameless protagonist discovers the novels of Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, and Francoise Sagan. ///The author depicts how different generations of the same family live different worlds, separated by experiences and time despite occupying the same physical spaces. The Jumhuriya Bridge threads symbolism throughout the novel—ushering in the beginning of the military fall of the city and later being the setting of sporadic events, from innocent flirting, to gulls, down to the shocking event that pushes the story up to its climax.
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To Love Life
by Alawiya Sobh
The novel revolves around the heroine Basma, who suffers from a neurological disease. The sedative medications prescribed by her doctor have affected her memory and so she has become confused. She tries to restore her memory and her body, which has been plagued by painful spasms – something difficult for someone like her, a dancer and choreographer. The novel unfolds inconsistently, telling the story of Basma from childhood on, experiences with her first boyfriend, Ahmad, and her sickness after following the tragic departure of him and her father during the Lebanese civil war. In addition to Basma’s story, we read about the lives of the people she knew and liked throughout her life, including her friend, Anisa, and her emotionally and financially tight husband, and how writing changed her life and helped her fight her disability. We also read about Amina, who is emotionally hungry, and Nizar who investigated different politics and beliefs, ending up insane. In addition to other characters with stories that run in parallel with the main character, Basma, whose life centres on her relationship with her lover and husband, Youssef. A creative painter, his shifts towards fundamentalism lead her to separate from him as she is passionate about life, love and dancing. The novel accurately describes the similarities between her sick body and that of Arab cities collapsed due to the sectarian wars that took place after the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. The heroine documents her sickness to a virtual friend, describing what made her sick and how she resists her illness with will and determination. Her narrative expresses her rejection of religious, sectarian and terrorist extremism of all sects and religions, especially those that diverged from the true Islamic religion and its compassionate teachings. In this novel we find poignant human details and a graceful narration full of expressions that make the reader anxious to know more about the destinies of all its characters. Between the memory of a past saturated with loss and love, and a crueler present witnessed in collapsing cities, Basma clings to her body that keeps on betraying her. Who said that our lives and our bodies are different from the stories of our cities? Who among us knows if our most recent dance was the farewell dance, or a new beginning?
