Writer Muhammad Hamad Al-Suwaigh published an article in "Ahwal Al-Ma'rifa" magazine in Shawwal of the year 1417 AH, in which he spoke in detail about the cultural famine from which the Arab child suffers and about the weakness that afflicts Arab children's literature.

The Arab child suffers from a cultural famine that is hidden from no one, and it is enough for us to visit our public libraries to discover the bitter truth. What we read of works for the Arab child are no more than a collection of efforts that neither nourish nor avail against hunger, the most dangerous of which are those copied from the literatures of the West or translated from them, as the child lives after reading and being influenced by them in an atmosphere completely foreign to him, present in body but absent in mind.

Our writers concerned with this literature are completely wrong in copying or translating from the literatures of others, for we Arabs have our broad heritage on which we can rely in the process of writing for the child. Many heritage books can be relied upon, such as Al-Maqamat by Al-Hariri, the Book of Animals and the Book of Misers by Al-Jahiz, the Book of Al-Iqd al-Farid by Ibn Abd Rabbih, and the book of One Thousand and One Nights and other heritage books.

These books and others are full of stories that can be reformulated for the child in a simplified, easy, and understandable language to suit the child's mind. We have another store of folk heritage from which we can extract many stories and tales for our children, for it is rich in sermons, lessons, and wisdom, and part of this heritage is collected in books that can be referred to and benefited from.

The Grimm brothers in Germany have a famous experience in dealing with the German child, as they returned to German folk tales and took from them what suits the German child by reformulating them anew and in a smooth and attractive language, and these formulations were presented and the child there relished them and responded to them and accepted them with an open heart. In France, the writers Charles Perrault and La Fontaine did a similar experience when they returned to the French literary heritage and derived from it what suited the mindset of the French child with a new and innovative formulation. In England, the writer Andrew Lang did a good experiment in this field relying on the English heritage, as did the Russian writer Krylov and the Norwegian Asbjørnsen, and I have not heard before that any of these relied on the book "The Misers" to translate something from it for the children of his country.

All the peoples of the world have transferred their folk tales to their children. As for us Arabs, it seems that we have relished the process of consumption from the West. If we import from the West what we eat, wear, and ride, why don't we import from its children's tales too, to encourage their circulation among our Arab children?

This is a wrong and also dangerous issue. We must take care to formulate our authentic heritage, not to import the heritage of others and gift it with greeting and appreciation to our children. Here are good attempts to collect our beautiful Arab heritage. In addition to the heritage centers scattered in many Arab countries, which are concerned with collecting, documenting, and recording heritage, there are writers who were keen to document many folk tales and proverbs, as our great writer Mr. Abdul Karim Al-Juhayman did when he collected many tales and proverbs prevailing in the Arabian Peninsula, and as Dr. Hassan El-Shamy did in Egypt, and as Mr. Abdul Rahman Al-Ghoul did in Jordan, and other Arab writers and authors in many Arab countries.

The cultural famine from which the Arab child suffers is not limited only to the absence of the book, but in the absence of a specialized press that cares for his culture. The magazines dedicated to the child in our Arab world can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand, and despite that, we suffer from their poor distribution, for they are of a purely local nature. The Sudanese magazine "Al-Sibyan", for example but not limited to, is not read in the countries of the Arab Maghreb, and the Syrian magazine "Osama" is not read in most of our Arab lands, and the Algerian magazine "M'quidich" does not reach any Arab country. If we measure these miserable conditions by the conditions of child culture in European and American countries, we will be struck by wonder and amazement. It is enough to know that in the United States of America alone there are more than four thousand magazines for the child, distributed at one time in the entire United States. As for European countries, magazines for the child are issued there in massive numbers that one might not believe.