The Amazing Toilet Paper Roll

Taghreed Najjar is a pioneer of modern children's literature in Jordan. A graduate of the American University of Beirut,Taghreed started her career as a teacher before becoming a full time writer of picture books and young adult novels. Her YA novels have been celebrated widely by her readers and various schools in the region have adopted them as part of their curriculum. A number of her books have won awards while others have been translated into foreign languages like English, Swedish, Turkish, French and Chinese.
One of her most critically acclaimed works is a series of ten picture books revolving around six-year old Jude and her family and friends.'The Halazone Series', deals with everyday childhood issues which are treated with humor and deftness by the author. One of Taghreed’s pet projects was collecting old Arabic children rhymes and publishing them in book and digital form to make them accessible to the modern child and family of today. She published two collections of rhymes, the latest entitled 'Musical Tickles' was selected by the National Centre for Children's Literature (a service of the French National Library) as one of the best publications in the Arab World in 2012/2013.

Taghreed is a member of the Jordanian Writer’s Association and takes part in international and regional conferences and workshops that deal with children literature.

About the Illustrator

Born and raised in the UAE, Dina Fawakhiri returned to her native Amman to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design in 1997, and began working in advertising soon after. Today Dina is the Creative Director of one of Jordan’s most prominent agencies, Wunderman, with numerous awards to her name. As a young artist, Dina’s favorite medium was pencil on paper, preferring black and white to color, with smooth rounded lines and perfect forms. But the fast-paced, commercially-driven advertising world eventually influenced her work as an artist. Inspired by the ease and speed of digital illustration, Dina’s lines got simpler, cleaner, bolder and faster. She began experimenting with color and found herself drawn to digital art as a new medium that lent itself to surrealist conceptual exploration. Several group exhibitions followed, and led to the “Space on board” skateboard exhibition in 2012, which presented a new and much welcome challenge – 3D work. Dina’s paper mache and wood carved skateboards were an opportunity ...