Author Sisters Reach Across Boundaries
- Community
- Aramco Brats
Author: Lori Olson-White
Released 15 February 2006
Sarah, left, and Elizabeth Spalding show the children’s book they have written in Arabic and English.
Photograph by Lori Olson-White
DHAHRAN, February 15, 2006 — First-time authors Elizabeth and Sarah Spalding had a full agenda when they sat down and started writing their new book, Dahman: The Mystery of the Champion Arabian Horse.
They wanted to increase cultural awareness between people in Saudi Arabia and the United States, write and illustrate a fun book that featured female main characters and fill a gap they saw in middle and primary school Arabic language books.
“It kind of started a couple years ago when we started taking Arabic in schools here in Dhahran,” Elizabeth said. “We would read children’s books in Arabic to get up to the level we needed to be, but as we got better at Arabic, we saw that the storylines and language were basically simple.”
“The plots were really simplistic in their ideas,” Sarah said, “and the more complex our understanding of Arabic got, the less the books helped us.”
Another thing the then-sixth-graders recognized was that all the main characters were male. “That’s why our two main characters are female,” Sarah said. We are striving to put together scrapbooks with this information so that we can have it for visitors to view after the exhibit itself.
>Dahman: The Mystery of the Champion Arabian Horse
One evening over dinner, the girls were discussing the problem with their parents, Marc and Jenny, both Saudi Aramco economists. Their mother suggested they do something about it.
Elizabeth and Sarah, Dhahran residents since the age of 2, wanted a story that would appeal equally to Saudi and American kids, especially girls. And they wanted something fun and exciting.
“We decided on a mystery because I’ve always enjoyed mysteries,” Elizabeth said.
“And we decided on a horse story,” Sarah said, “because we have three horses, but also because we really wanted a story that could transcend cultures, and we thought horses could do that.”
The two pitched their dual-language book idea to Saudi Aramco. Company representatives liked the concept and agreed to provide editing support, buy copies and help the authors work with a local printer.
According to Elizabeth, the writing took about two months, but the illustrations took quite a bit longer. The entire process — from initial idea to a publication-ready manuscript — took roughly a year and a half.
The juniors at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, completed most of the work while on vacations and holidays in Saudi Arabia, laboring over the words and artwork and bringing to life the story of a Saudi girl and an American girl who share a common love for horses.
Translating the story into Arabic was a challenge the girls tackled with the help of their former Arabic teacher at Dhahran Middle School, Fatima Al-Malak.
“We wanted to make sure the language was at the same level in Arabic as it was in English,” Elizabeth said.
Eleven thousand copies of Dahman: The Mystery of the Champion Arabian Horse were printed in the first run by Saudi-based Al-Mutawa Press, with copies going to several international and Saudi girls’ schools in the Kingdom, as well as Saudi Aramco schools in the Eastern Province. Copies can also soon be ordered online from the Suq on the AramcoExpats.com website (http://www.aramcoexpats.com/Suq/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=61).
A deal is also in the works with British publisher Troubadour, which has shown interest.
Elizabeth and Sarah will spend some time promoting their book in Saudi Arabia during upcoming school breaks, and they also plan to market it in the United States, a move they hope will go even further in helping to build understanding between the two cultures in which they’ve grown up.
The two agreed that the book is the logical outgrowth of their ongoing interest in Saudi Arabia, conceived out of their life in Dhahran.