(AP) With her 3-year-old daughter sitting inside a red Target shopping cart, Aya Khalil looked through the aisles with anticipation. The author was on a mission: See for herself that her children’s book about a boy and his grandmother baking for an Islamic feast was actually carried by her local Target store in Toledo.
“Oh my God! … It’s right there,” Khalil said on spotting “The Night Before Eid.”
“Oh yeaaaaah!” her daughter joyously exclaimed. Khalil giggled.
For Khalil, it was a pinch-me moment as an author — and also a big deal as a mother.
“This didn’t happen when I was growing up. It was like, ‘Are things really changing now?’” she said. “I’m just really happy that now my own kids will be able to see that and that they’ll know that their stories are valid and … are out there like a totally normal thing.”
