 We know that reading is crucial to our children. It's crucial to their education and their upbringing. But what their reading matters? We want the best books in the hands of every Muslim child. We want books worth reading in the hands of our children. Because words matter. Words build our children's worldview. It matters what they're reading. So let's take a quick look at what's out there right now. So the first book is called The Hina Wars. It's a Muslim protagonist, a Muslim girl on the cover. It's about Hina. It's about a school competition, Hina Competition Mehendi. The author is a Muslim, okay, visible Muslim. This is the author you'd see her if you open the inside cover. But what you might not know if this book was in your child's hand is that the protagonist is this. I don't know if there's younger kids in the room, but she comes out to her Muslim family and then pursues a romance with a non-Muslim girl. Okay, this is a top-selling book marketed to young adults. They call it YA, young adults. That doesn't mean adults who are young. It means children, like young teens. Okay, the next book, Salma the Syrian Chef. A beautiful picture book marketed to young children about a Syrian refugee. She misses her grandmother and wants to make her full recipe, Fava bean recipe, and she cooks with the different members of her family. But then we get to this page and she's cooking with her two uncles. But when you read underneath the picture, it's very clear that these two men are in a romantic relationship. This is a picture book. For young children. Then you have, on the other hand, you have authors like this. So New York Times best-selling author Terry Brooks. He's written classics, good, clean books. Like this, The Sword of Shenard. So this was actually on Ilm Tree's reading list, I think, several years ago. It's a clean book. It's a good book. The more it has a message, it has a moral. It's about finding truth. But fast forward a few decades and he comes out with a book like this. A sci-fi dystopian novel. And the main character falls in love with a humanoid, a robot, who was created her purpose creation. She was a pleasure since that's what she's called a synthetic being, a pleasure, synthetic being for the purpose of providing pleasure to Richmond. Again, this is a YA book, Young Adult, marketed to young children. These are not books worth reading. These are not the books we want in our children's hands. So a mindful Muslim reader, we ask ourselves questions and we spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a book worth reading. Is this how I want my child to speak? That's one of the questions we ask because we rate our books on our website for language. And this is the question we're asking when we give the rating. Is this how I want my child to speak? Amazon best-selling book. With words like this. Do we want this in our child's hands or do we want a book like this? Written by the poet laureate of the United States, Amanda Gorman, a young black woman, the youngest ever poet laureate who was appointed by the president. With words like this. The next question, is this how I want my child to act? So there's books like this, again another. I pulled these all from the Amazon best-seller lists. Books like this or do we want in the hands of our children? Books like this. The one Amir read earlier this evening that teaches children about honesty. Even when it's difficult. And the last question and probably the most important, is this how I want my child to think? Because in the end of the day, our beliefs, what's in our hearts, are going to inform our actions and inform the way we live and inform our akhira. So is this how I want my child to think? So there's books like this, very popular. I'm sure you guys have all seen it. This is going to be on the shelves in your children's classrooms in most schools. Or you can have books like this, 10 beautiful things. It's about a young child traveling across the country with her grandmother and the grandmother challenges her to find beauty in the world, even though she's faced a tragedy. So is this how I want my child to think? Those are the questions we spend a lot of time thinking about when we recommend books. So a few days ago, someone forwarded me this Instagram post from an organization called We Are Teachers that represents about three million teachers. All reading counts, graphic novels, that's comic books, magazines, read aloud, movie captions, a back of the cereal box. All reading counts. We disagree with this. We disagree with this. All reading, if all of this reading is equal and it all counts, that means there's no value in elevating a child through what they're reading. There's no value in elevating their language or their morality or the messages that they're getting. So we disagree with this and we're going to do a little exercise. We're going to rewrite this Instagram post. So if this was Amira, Mashallah spends a lot of time making beautiful Instagram posts, so follow us on Instagram if you don't already. This is what we would post. This reading counts. Reading that builds language that elevates the language of our children. Reading that fortifies their moral character. And most importantly, reading books that increases their understanding of the truth. Those are books worth reading. This is what we want in the hands of our children. So one of our mission at Mindful Muslim Reader is to elevate young Muslim readers one book at a time. We read every book cover to cover so parents don't have to. We rate them and then we put them on our site.