The house of wisdom

Collins Big Cat Arabic Reading Programme is a guided reading series for ages 3 to 11.

The series is structured with reference to the learning progression of Arabic at nursery and primary schools researched especially for Collins.

This carefully graded approach allows children to build up their reading knowledge of Arabic step by step. Level 11 books provide more literary language, more complex sentence structures and less support from illustrations.

Characters are more varied, with action sustained over several pages.

Non-fiction titles include glossaries where necessary.

Sentences are still short for better understanding. However, grammatical vowel endings are more evident to encourage fluent reading and to provide familiarity with some higher-level features of written Arabic. The House of Wisdom was a major intellectual centre during the Islamic Golden Age.

The famous historian and translator Hunayn bin Ishaq tells us about this wonderful library and the achievements of the many scholars working there, and his time in charge of the translation section.