Mama Shamsi at the Bazaar by Mojdeh Hassani

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mama Shamsi at the Bazaar by Mojdeh Hassani Sarah Sahn Hassani, Mojdeh Mama Shamsi at the Bazaar; written by Mojdeh Hassani and Samira Iravani; illus. by Maya Fidawi. Dial, 2023 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780593110614 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780593110621 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* 4-8 yrs Young Samira is accompanying her grandmother, Mama Shamsi, to the big bazaar in Tehran to go grocery shopping for the first time. She’s excited, but she’s also [End Page 190] scared of getting lost, so she suggests all sorts of ways she can hide under her grandmother’s chador to stay safe. “Let me ride on your back,/ curled in your chador,/ so warm and so black,” she says, but “Na, na, na,” Mama Shamsi responds “with a chortle./ ‘Our neighbors will think that I am a turtle!’” Samira offers up more possible animals in scenes that come to life in Fidawi’s soft, watercolor-like digital art as Mama Shamsi transforms into a mule, a kangaroo, and a giraffe, (all wearing her pink flowered headscarf), while Samira peeks mischievously out from under the black chador. Mother-daughter writing team Mojdeh Hassani and Samira Iravani explain in their authors’ note that they based this cozy, whimsical outing on Hassani’s childhood in Tehran in the 1960s and ’70s, aiming to show the chador “as the safe and comforting space we always knew it to be” as well as “a stage-curtain cloth” that invited imaginative play. In doing so, they evoke the familiar warmth of a child’s relationship with a beloved grandparent, encapsulated in the last two spreads, which zoom in on Samira’s small hand in her grandmother’s and then pull back as they head into the busy market. A return to the city’s lively streets for a second look at the book’s urban milieu could extend a cuddly lapsit or an engaging storytime with grandparents and caretakers. Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois