Journey Beyond the Great Tree
Need something absorbing to occupy the kids — like an unusual and relevant story?
A story that takes at least an afternoon to read?
A novel?
A novel of family life and surreal adventure with a Florida Muslim girl on a quest to help her father and cure an ailing orange tree, Journey Beyond the Great Tree offers lessons from Islamic tradition that middle grade readers (ages 9 to 12) can appreciate.
Deadly citrus greening bacteria have infected orange trees in Florida, and without his trusty, great tree to rely on for fruit, Mr. Farooq’s orange juice company looks doomed as well. Journey Beyond the Great Tree tells the story of his daughter’s search for a cure. Join Safa Farooq as she meets a winged creature and an invisible Quran teacher who help her evade interplanetary jinn. Grab onto a branch and hoist yourself up as she ascends a fantastic, ailing tree to ride a dragon into outer space, seeking an elixir. Read and understand every word of a child-friendly dialogue that gives Safa a rational basis for believing in the existence of God.
Give a kid something good to read. Approved by Ustadha Zaynab Ansari and Shaykh Qays Arthur.
The first three chapters are a breeze: Read them for Free
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When a south Florida blight threatens to kill the fantastic orange tree that supplies her father’s juice company with fruit, Safa Farooq begins climbing the tree, in search of answers. On its high branches, she meets friendly, good creatures and wicked beings as well as a mentor who teaches her to recite the Quran and evade invisible enemies in her quest for a cure. Will Safa save Mr. Farooq’s Organic Orange Juice, or will she get lost, forever, among the branches of the towering, great tree? Find out and learn the lessons that could help Safa and company on their journey of knowledge and remembrance.
About the author
Adnan Ashraf earned a B.A. in Literature and Languages from Bennington College, where he studied Shakespeare and Kafka with Richard Tristman, writing with essayist Edward Hoagland, and French literature with André Bernold. At City College of New York, he majored in creative writing under the supervision of novelist Frederic Tuten and obtained an M.A. in English. In London, he completed a five-month creative writing masterclass with novelist Adam Foulds and Professor Jon Cook and received a certificate from UEA. For most of the 1990s, he lived and worked in New York City, where his experimental web-based novella, The Straight Path fi Sabile Allah, won the NYU Press Prize for Hyperfiction (1999, NYU Press). His essay “A Vehicle for the Sacred,” about the Islamic content of Pickthall’s novels, was published by Brill in 2017. Journey Beyond the Great Tree is his first middle grade novel (Zaynab Books, 2020). Since 2022, he has lived with his wife and children in the Chicago metropolitan area, where he is employed as a high school literature teacher at a private school.
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