In Samir and His Brown Trousers, Habeeb Yaghy draws Samir as one child among many children worldwide who have likes and dislikes, desires, fears, and secrets but whose parents– overprotective ones in particular–fail to provide them the choice to explore their personalities.

Habeeb Yaghy is certain that his readers–basically, learners of Levantine Arabic as a foreign language of any age at the elementary (A2) level–will enjoy the story while improving their Arabic language skills and learning about Lebanon’s cultural context vividly addressed inside the book.

Before you dive into the story, you are encouraged to answer (or at least think about) the pre-reading questions and study the glossary to prepare yourself and make the reading experience more enjoyable.

Each page in Arabic with diacritics (tashkeel) is followed by its parallel English translation, so that you can easily find the equivalents of unknown words and phrases or challenging sentences.

Post-reading activities will help you check your understanding and actively use vocabulary and expressions from the story.

You can make use of the accompanying audio track in a number of ways, depending on your learning preferences and needs. Listen as you follow along silently while reading the text, shadow the narrator to improve your pronunciation and intonation, or listen again (hours, days, weeks) after reading to see how much you can understand.