Bab El Nouar: the fauna and flora of Morocco, told as stories
Bab El Nouar introduces the fauna and flora of Morocco, not as a simple scientific inventory, but as stories you want to follow to the very end. Each album is rooted in a real species (the argan tree, the Atlas lion, the thuya, the dorcas gazelle, the centuries-old cedar) and tells of everything that lives around it. Children discover that a single tree can be a whole world: the bird that nests in it, the insect that feeds on its flowers, the animal that shelters in it, the people who depend on it. Without being told, they learn to see their surroundings no longer as mere scenery, but as a fragile balance, the very one Morocco has already lost in its forests with the Atlas lion
For children aged 3 and up, and for parents, grandparents, and teachers who want to teach them to look at nature.
They learn to name and recognize the trees, plants, and animals around them, whether in their garden, on their balcony, or in the forests and deserts of the country. They discover endemic species, some already endangered, like the argan tree or the Atlas lion, before they follow the path of species already gone. By understanding that a single species holds an entire ecosystem, they grasp why protecting nature and not polluting it is not an abstract gesture, but a concrete necessity. Finally, they learn that Moroccan nature carries a history, traditions, and know-how found nowhere else in the world, and they take pride in their culture and in their natural land alike.
No volume is ever a simple fact sheet: each tells a whole world, in the form that best suits the species. For some, the story follows the rhythm of the seasons, like a real life unfolding page after page. For others, like the argan tree, a whole territory is explored: its history, its scientific portrait, the traditions and rituals around it, the know-how that turns its fruit into gold, and the question of preserving it for future generations. The stories continue from one volume to the next: an animal met in one album may reappear in another, so that children gradually build links between the species that make up Moroccan nature.
Bab El Nouar does not speak of an abstract or distant nature, but of Morocco’s own: the argan tree with its roots sunk in arid land between sea and mountain; the Atlas lion, which long ruled the mountains before disappearing from Morocco’s forests, and of which only one family survives, protected in the Rabat zoo; the thuya of the Middle Atlas forests; the dorcas gazelle crossing the desert; or the bird that visits the family garden or balcony every morning. Each species is told through what makes it unique here and nowhere else: its territory, its history, and the traditions Moroccans have passed on to it from generation to generation. Recognizing in a book the tree in your garden, the bird on your balcony, or the animal your grandmother used to talk about gives you one more reason to become attached to it, and, in turn, to protect it.
The Argan Tree: The Tree of a Thousand Secrets. History, science, traditions, and the know-how that turns its fruit into gold: a tree found nowhere else in the world, and a whole territory that lives around it. Push open the door and discover the nature of Morocco
