The third book drawn in the Magnificent Madrassa series, written by Muhammad Akhtar and published by Hikmat Publishing in London. Thirty-nine pages, hardback, for readers aged four to seven. All three books are drawn and complete, and the series is on pre-order from the author at magnificentmadrassa.com.
A cold bright morning at the madrassa. Imam Idris arrives still wearing his outdoor coat and a big scarf, with a head torch strapped to his forehead, and greets the class: peace be upon you all, my mountain climbers.
He asks them a riddle. What has roots that nobody sees, is taller than a tree and yet never grows? “Mountains!” the class answers together. He recites, “Have We not made the earth a resting place? And the mountains as pegs?” (Quran 78:6–7) Then he tells them to wrap up, and the children rush for their woolly hats and coats.
They close their eyes, and open them on a mountainside. The peaks go far higher than any building they know. Imam Idris leads them up a winding path to a cave mouth, switches on his torch and walks in: they will explore this mountain from the inside out. Deep inside they find a chamber glittering with crystals, grown over thousands of years by water carrying minerals through the rock. Further on, a red glow — the magma chambers, hot enough to toast the marshmallows he produces from his bag.
Out of the cave into daylight, and they are standing on a sleeping volcano. Lava cools into new rock and new islands, Imam Idris explains, and volcanic ash makes soil rich enough to grow food. Nearby, steam rises from a bubbling hot spring, and a geyser goes off like a fountain.
Then they climb. Snow crunches underfoot, snowflakes land on their cheeks, a glacier melts into fresh water that will become streams and rivers. At the top the world is a patchwork of forests, lakes and tiny villages. Imam Idris reaches behind a rock and pulls out a sled big enough for the whole class, and they race down the mountain — until a bump, and everything goes still.
They open their eyes in the madrassa, Imam Idris brushing snow off his sleeves. Each child says what they learned. When the day ends and they open the door, everything outside is under fresh white snow; Imam Idris stands behind them turning a giant crystal in his hand. “Until our next adventure,” he calls after them.
| Title | Magnificent Madrassa: Mountains as Pegs |
|---|---|
| Author | Muhammad Akhtar |
| Illustrator | Amna Zaki, The Rainbow Stories — main illustrator, with the studio’s lead illustrator and team rendering under her direction |
| Publisher | Hikmat Publishing, London |
| Series | One of three in the Magnificent Madrassa series, with Stars & Universe and The Miracle of Water. All three are drawn and complete |
| Reading age | 4 to 7, and curious early readers |
| Extent | 39 pages, hardback |
| Where to buy | magnificentmadrassa.com — pre-order |
Every spread was roughed in pencil and approved before any colour was laid down. The cover and two spreads are shown here, each rough beside the page it became.
Drawn by hand in Procreate. Nothing in this book was generated.
All three books in the series are now drawn and complete. Amna Zaki is the main illustrator: the character designs, the direction on every spread and the sign-off on every finished page are hers, with the studio’s lead illustrator and team working on the rendering under that direction. It is the same way the studio runs a storyboard or a character design job of any size.
Amna Zaki of The Rainbow Stories, a children’s book illustration studio in Lahore, is the main illustrator — the characters, the direction on every spread and the final approval are hers, with the studio’s lead illustrator and team rendering under her direction. The book is written by Muhammad Akhtar and published by Hikmat Publishing in London.
By deciding where the light comes from before anything is coloured. The crystal cave is lit by the crystals themselves and by the torch strapped to Imam Idris’s forehead, so every face, every shadow and every colour in that chamber has to come from those two sources. The pencil rough fixes who stands where and which crystals are doing the lighting; the colour pass then has only one job to get right.
That is the test the mountain spreads set. At the summit the five figures are a few centimetres tall against a whole valley, so each one has to be recognisable by silhouette, coat colour and hat alone. It is why the cast was given distinct winter outfits for this book rather than variations on one coat.
Usually yes, because the expensive part is already done. Imam Idris and the four children were designed once at the start of the series and every book since is drawn against those sheets. What a later book pays for is new settings and new spreads, not new characters.
Mountains as Pegs moves from a classroom to a snowfield, a cave, a magma chamber, a volcano and a summit inside forty pages. Each one needs its own palette and its own light, and the thing holding them together is the cast. Settings are built after the storyboard, once the running order of the whole book is agreed, so no setting is painted twice.
From the author at magnificentmadrassa.com. All three books in the series are on pre-order in hardback, as single titles or as the complete series; the author’s own site gives the current delivery estimate.
The other books followed the same way here, rough beside printed page: Stars & Universe, The Miracle of Water, Sage Sails The World and its Great Barrier Reef sequel. All case studies.
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