Mido: In Modern Standard Arabic: Volume 2

Another excellent Arabic language learning resource from Matthew Aldrich. I have the Egyptian version of this book as well and am hoping he will bring out a Levant version in the near future.

I've been learning Arabic for a few years now. I've studied with several different course books, but I haven't been able to find anything for reading practice besides dry, serious texts and media which are still above my reading level and not very interesting to read about. This book has exactly what I've been looking for, it's not too difficult and I downloaded the MP3's from their website and I can read along as I listen. The stories are fun, the illustrations are cute and help me understand story. The characters are interesting, so I don't feel like I am studying. It's a great book if you still aren't ready to read newspapers in Arabic, like me.

First, I'm very glad a book like this exists as it has harakat, and the translation is on the opposite page, so it's easy enough to read the Arabic without seeing the English right away. It's set up quite well.The cultural piece of it though, is pretty awful. The mother is basically just some annoying servant "picking up the house wherever Mido left his pajamas, socks, and things." The daughter's most important task of the day is getting her eyeliner right, and both kids are overall insanely spoiled.In the grand scheme of things, the cultural aspect of it isn't as important as the format, but I'm just disappointed that we continue pushing this idea of it being normal for parents to be subservient to their kids, and kids to still think their parents are just a thorn in their side, and this book seems to even have an exaggerated version of this scenario compared to American literature for kids (which already pushes this idea like being a brat is some rite of passage).