Bab El Jabr: making mathematics easy for children
Bab El Jabr is a collection of illustrated books that tell children the story of numbers and mathematical structures, not as lessons, but as encounters. In each story, a child, a Moroccan place, and a mysterious guide cross paths.
An everyday object (bread being shared, a circle drawn in the sand, a mosaic on a wall) becomes the key to understanding the mathematical idea, even before it is named. Mathematics feels intuitive, visual, and playful, never abstract or punishing, and the reader guesses along with the children in the story.
For children aged 3 and up, and for parents and teachers who want to explore mathematics together.
Each notion (zero, fractions, geometry, infinity…) becomes a character in its own right, who comes to life, speaks, and travels across Morocco. The Wise Zero, for example, embodies zero itself: its story, its encounters, and its everyday gestures gradually reveal what this number means. By imagining this character, the child understands the concept without ever feeling that it is being taught, and math anxiety gives way to curiosity. Children also learn that their heritage holds real, fundamental contributions to science and mathematics, still relevant in classrooms around the world today.
Illustrated albums, published as volumes. The stories continue from one volume to the next, and the characters meet again throughout the series, so that children gradually build links between the different mathematical notions
Each volume is set in a real place in Morocco (a kasbah, a medina, a souk, a riad) and naturally weaves local culture into the story: an Arabic word explained in dialogue, a shared dish, a zellige pattern that becomes a geometry lesson. Children discover a mathematical concept and a piece of their own heritage at the same time, and neither ever overshadows the other. For young readers everywhere, the books are also a window onto Moroccan cities, patterns, and scholarship, presented with warmth and authenticity, not as a footnote in someone else’s story
Read the first volume, The Wise Zero, then let your child discover the other characters, such as Ypsilon and her friends. A child who closes a Bab El Jabr book has not learned a rule of math. They have met a guide, solved a riddle, and discovered that mathematics speaks their language too, tells their country’s story too, and belongs to them as much as to anyone else in the world. Push open the door and meet the first guide