Saffron Press, Whitby, ON (2025)

08/07/2025

🎨There has been a gluttonous trend of late – of using a popular design platform to create and sell colouring books for children – except, the art is not created by actual human artists. Before falling for this purchase, consider the work of an actual graphic artist called Ebaa and how supporting her work, including a colouring book can impact her life.🖌️

“because art is the only breath I have left in all this pain” - Ebaa✨

Ebaa’s art studio was located on the upper floor of her home in northern G@za. After being forcefully displaced, she walked to the south, passing tanks and unconscionable pain. “I lived in conditions unfit for human life”.

When her family were allowed to return to the north, she returned on foot, walking for two days and collapsing from sheer exhaustion, with no access to food or water. If sleep came it was while lying in the streets.

Once home, she discovered that her art studio had been completely destroyed and only a part of the home she had always known was still standing. Her father’s small fabric shop, the only source of income for the family, was now gone, captured in precious memories. Her younger sister’s health needs cannot be met due to the rising costs of unobtainable medications. They have been working to rebuild and Ebaa has taken responsibility to do what artists do – create beauty in the rubble.

✨Ebaa draws to preserve stories, memories, and to plant hope in the midst of all that has been taken away. Her colouring book: MY ARTISTIC JOURNEY TO PALEST1NE is a project created to rebuild from the rubble. ..✨
…

🖍️So, instead of reaching for a non-human-generated purchase, consider a colouring book “designed with love from Gaz@”, one that can inspire through art, and encourage a thoughtful connection to identity and belonging.🌱A colouring book crafted by a talented graphic artist.

✨🫶🏽Please find links to support Ebaa directly in her bio! .gaza 🫶🏽✨

(Full post on blog with links)

07/30/2025

🌱To talk about stories centred around food while simultaneously witnessing the forced starvation of populations around the world would seem thoughtless, cruel, antagonistic even, if not for the fact that food, like most of what we consume, is inherently political.

✨Mona Zahed, eight times displaced is a Palestinian chef and published author of her very own cookbook TABKHA: Recipes from Under the Rubble. When we chatted a couple of days ago, she had walked for hours to find flour. She says hunger has worn their bodies down. We can help.

Tabkha began as an idea from her tent in Gaza where she documented ancestral recipes. She met Akko, a Japanese chef online who suggested Mona create a booklet that could be sold to raise funds. Chef Akko helped Mona start the process and then sold copies in Germany and Japan. an initiative requesting donations for the price of a coffee to raise funds for families, supported Mona to develop the booklet into an illustrated recipe book.

A passionate entrepreneur, running a catering business, Mona’s food was enjoyed by friends and family at events and celebrations. Her most loved recipes - twenty-two in the first edition - are a form of resistance, ensuring that her heritage lives and her book - published by - serves not only to nourish her and her family but many other families in her community along the way. If you are still unsure of what collective liberation looks like - this is it, in action.

Tabkha is a cookbook you want to hold in your hands, experiment with the beautifully illustrated recipes, each one by its very own artist, and savour. Mona offers vegetarian and vegan recipes among the collection.

If you’ve been wondering how you can support families in Gaza, please consider purchasing this book. All proceeds will go directly to support Mona and her community.

Purchase TABKHA: Recipes from Under the Rubble by pre ordering the second edition, complete with additional recipes from Slingshot Books . I also found it available in Canada at

You can also support Mona Zahed directly
🙏🏽🌱📚

07/26/2025

✨🌱A request - I ask you to share just one activity to support the children of Ga za. At children receive care and education. One teacher, Hadeel Al Gharbawi is a journalist collaborating to create a safer space for learning and growth.✨🌱

📚Teachers, librarians, camp counselors and youth care workers often adapt at the drop of a button, each and every day of a school year. I’m asking you to adapt ONE activity to serve the needs of a group of children, like our own. I am here to help and answer any questions.🌿

UNRWA’s Sam Rose has stated that a classroom full of children have been k1lled every single day for 2 years now. ONE CLASSROOM FULL OF CHILDREN GONE EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Can you even imagine going back to school in September and finding that not one of the students in your class had survived the summer?

What can I do? This is the question that keeps surfacing - perhaps the normalization of a netherworld has caused some to freeze in place and not know how to support. I’m remaining hopeful that this world will be shaken to act. Shaken vigorously so not to succumb to the conditioning of unseeing another person’s humanity.

Remember the phrase, it takes a village? Well, we can be that village. As teachers, we have the skills to act - by sharing just ONE activity to offer children surviving in tents surrounded by sounds of horror the space to breathe, to hope and dream, to be children.

Please be that person. Find the link to SHARE ONE activity in the bio.
We also need translators - if you can translate activities please send a DM.
✨You can also visit to donate directly.✨

Share with teachers! Share with artists! Share on your page!

07/16/2025

This work is and always has been for all children. May we never look away. Let’s be prepared to have conversations with our Little Ones so that humanity survives.💭📚🌱
In We Are Cheesemakers, young siblings consider who looks after the land when people are pushed ‘there’ or pulled ‘here’. Their home is lost due to poisoned soils and Mummī firmly states that “Humans forget”
Whether it’s climate justice, hunger or forced displacement, our liberation is interconnected - it’s up to us to see how. Ask questions. Invite conversation. Humans - do not forget again.

✨Join us this Saturday!🌱

07/16/2025

ID: Text in black on a white background reads:
If these vultures steal our souls…don’t forget us, and don’t turn us into numbers. We love life. We have dreams just like you. We have children and spouses we love. But to truly be human means never abandoning those who need your humanity.
—Medical teams at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis

05/31/2025

Story Sunbirds is a kidlit collective rooted in justice, anti-racism and anti-colonialism. This group is made up of creators including writers, illustrators and publishing professionals, the very people rooted in creating work for children, in a world where the basic human rights of children should never be in question.

In partnership with .international (International Board on Books for Young Children), Story Sunbirds launched the fundraiser to support Gaza’s Librarians and to provide essential humanitarian aid for displaced children and surviving families. These spaces have become sanctuaries of hope when schools, libraries and homes have been reduced to rubble. It is impossible to look away.

Please support and help with their goal of raising $10,000 USD for children by June 1st, 2025. The children of Gaza are our children.

If you love picture books, support libraries and believe in the human dignity of all children, then please donate whatever you are able. I have shared the links below:

In Canada, donations can be made through IBBY Canada – please direct your donation to in the Notes field.

IBBY Canada https://www.ibby-canada.org/join-donate/

Story Sunbirds Campaign https://storysunbirds.substack.com/p/ibby-x-story-sunbirds-libraries-are?r=3k80op&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

(Full post on blog)

05/15/2025

You are invited to a community gathering where we will listen to stories about migration and the impact of these journeys on the lives of humans in our very communities.

In almost 16 years since launching Saffron Press, this will be our first book launch and community has always been central to this work.

Our place of gathering was created to be fully accessible and to include people with disabilities who are so often marginalized and excluded from participating in community activities.

A book reading of WE ARE CHEESEMAKERS, an art activity and more!

If you can attend, please register - link in bio. We look forward to hosting you to come, gather and eat!

05/14/2025

As much as I believe that compassion and humanity still exists in this world - the children of Palestine, of Sudan, Kashmir and Panjab (children everywhere) are always front of mind. Instead of bom b s may children be able to read and listen to books. May they enjoy their childhoods, grow and flourish. May they not have to wonder where they will find food today or whether they will survive another day. 🍉

04/14/2025

How can we interpret the seedlings?
For me, they are the five steps to become the kind of humans who would stand for the liberation of all, beginning with Daya. Each action requires us to push further, to challenge ourselves and to become uncomfortable before we can become agents of change.

The Garden of Peace required the most research of all titles so far, given the need for historical context. One of the most beautiful insights was the learning that the Panj Pyaray travelled from each ‘corner’ of undivided India (then including Pakistan, Bangladesh and even beyond some say) to reach Anandpur - the city of happiness. Today, borders are becoming deeper and higher which ultimately will result in some sort of resistance. I wonder what that looks like for each of us? Does it impact us today or will it show up in months or even years to come?

We are all interconnected, whether we are here or over there - when 20,000+ childrens’ human rights are erased before our eyes, we have to question how this can happen.

Days and heritage months come and go. We have to push through the steps and become warriors of change.
SARBAT DA BHALLA: for the collective liberation of all!

Art by Nana Sakata

04/14/2025

🌱CHALLENGE INJUSTICE🌱
These are the words that come to mind when thinking of Vaisakhi. It’s not the tropes of food, festivals or folktales but the fierce commitment to being an upstander. Knowing that if we see something, we cannot unsee it. The more we continue to listen, read and learn, the more we are able to grow and shift conditioning of what we believe to be true. As a creator of books for children, I cannot unsee the horror of this world - the 20,000+ children whose lives have been brutally taken by force and still, no justice.

“And a promise was made that day. They would share the seedlings from the Garden of Peace and plant them alongside their local crops. The Khalsa promised to give each other a fair chance to grow, with the weeds of course. Weeds were plants too, after all.” (The Garden of Peace, 2017, Saffron Press).🌿
✨As educators we are always asking students to infer and interpret. I feel that’s at the core of all learning. And this is also true of Vaisakhi - a time to contemplate, think upon and evolve. What is our role in communities? How do we care for each other? Who is being trodden upon? Do we remain silent while witnessing human rights abuses? Or do we call for justice? ✨

Please continue reading on the blog if interested🌱🙏🏽

Art by Nana Sakata

04/14/2025

ID: When we come together in ardaas [a prayer and petition to the Guru], Sarbat da Bhala – “for the prosperity of all” – reminds us that justice must transcend borders and our advocacy for human rights must be relentless. —Manpreet Kaur Kalra

04/02/2025

So deeply grateful for the generosity being shared for We Are Cheesemakers. 🙏🏽✨

ID: Text in brown handwritten typeface on a muted coral-brown background with cheese elements from the illustrations. Text reads: “The interplay between the heart opening narration and the breathtaking illustrations is distinctive. The symbolism, deep reverence for soil, land and heritage, and the evocative storytelling make this book a timeless treasure. I recommend this book with all my heart.” Gayatri Sethi, author of Unbelonging

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