RIYADH: BookLee, a monthly literary subscription service, aims to help children create enduring memories by encouraging a love of reading and education among youngsters between the ages of 2 and 13.

“Our mission is to create life-long, happy memories for kids through the love of reading,” BookLee co-founder Raneem Al-Mujel told Arab News.

“Books can offer a variety of benefits. It’s not only to instill the habit (of reading) from a young age but to provide the child with the right motor skills (and) social skills at a young age. Books can be used as a prop for ‘tummy time,’ starting from one month of the child’s life.

“We provide unique books, in both English and Arabic, and DIY activities plus tools tailored and professionally chosen based on the child’s age needs.”

Al-Mujel, who is a new mother to an 8-month-old son, Fahad, stressed the importance of encouraging reading at an early age and the ways in which it can spark a child’s creativity and imagination. She said this is one of the things that motivated her to launch BookLee.

“Books can help with children’s sensory needs (and to) understand their feelings when they’re overwhelmed with uncontrollable tantrums as toddlers,” she said. “They can also help children increase their vocabulary and understand important social skills such as sympathy and compassion before they start school.

“Books can help children read about characters going through situations they can relate to in middle school and junior high school, and know how to deal with them in a constructive way.”

She added: “I’ve always loved children’s books, and mothers around me always complained about not knowing how to encourage their kids to read. I always felt like it’s an issue worth exploring and working towards fixing it.”

BookLee, which is based in Riyadh, offers three subscription options, which run for 3, 6 or 12 months. It also works with schools to provide children with special seasonal and end-of-the-year reading boxes.

In addition to books, the packages it sends out include items for use in fun, educational activities, such as art supplies and decorations. One of the activities for children between the ages of 6 and 13, for example, involves the creation of DIY slime kits, which helps children to improve their cognitive skills and hand-eye coordination.

“For the first month of any subscription, we include a DIY ‘reading corner’ with fairy lights, so that children can have their own assigned corner for reading, and we ensure there’s a reading schedule for the child and the parent to fill with a reward system (using star stickers),” Al-Mujel said.

Each book is thoughtfully and carefully selected by BookLee’s experienced team of buyers, or “book wizards.”

“We call them ‘book wizards’ because they truly know the industry inside and out and they choose incredible books that never fail to impress us,” said Al-Mujel.

“Our books are fun to read for adults and children, a perfect opportunity to bond with children during reading time.”

The books are chosen to help children learn valuable lessons and develop healthy behaviors such as proper bedtime rituals, being physically active, showing kindness to others, and journaling.

“If we don’t think the content is good enough, we simply don’t share it with our customers,” Al-Mujel said.

The boxes for older children sometimes include books that tell the inspiring success stories of public figures such as Apple guru Steve Jobs and internationally renowned British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid.

BookLee’s website highlights its easy, three-step subscription process, Al-Mujel said, which begins by specifying the age of the child and length of the subscription period and ends with enjoying the books together with “hugs and cuddles recommended.”

To help encourage a thorough understanding of the books being read, books are available in both English and Arabic and subscribers are able to mix and match the languages.

The idea for BookLee came to Al-Mujel in 2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when she was living and working in Dubai as a marketing manager for an international software company.

“So many family members started getting ill and I was very worried, not knowing when I’d be able to go back and see my family,” she said.

During that troubling time, Al-Mujel said she began to recall good times from her childhood.

“I started having childhood flashbacks to happy memories; I think my brain was trying to soothe my anxieties as a coping mechanism,” she said. “All my happy childhood memories revolved around my sisters and me being very excited and waiting patiently to receive our King Abdulaziz Library monthly book subscription.

“I remember we used to try and do whatever it took to convince my father to take us to Saudi Post to pick up our package, like drawing on old books and ‘hosting’ an art gallery in our living room. We got more creative with convincing dad to drive us every month,” she said.

The 31-year-old said she does not remember much about the specific books she read.

“I’m sure they were great and they helped me love reading but I remember the feeling of excitement, the butterflies in my stomach as if it was yesterday,” she said.

“I really wanted to offer the same feeling, the same happiness to children today.”

Al-Mujel officially launched BookLee with her sisters, Nawal and Anoud, in February 2021. Like them, the members of their youthful team are all Saudis, she said, who share a desire to deliver a quality selection of books that will help create life-long readers at a young age. It currently ships only within Saudi Arabia but Al-Mujel hopes soon to expand to help children across the Gulf Cooperation Council area develop their reading skills.

It is still early days for the new business and hard-working Al-Mujel is balancing running it with her marketing job in Dubai and the demands of motherhood. She said she would be happy if it eventually becomes her full-time job but either way she has high hopes it will have a positive effect on the lives of many children in Saudi Arabia and beyond.

“I hope to see millions of children being positively impacted by BookLee,” she said. “I hope for parents to see us as a trusted source for their children’s learning and reading needs.”

She added: “I am so privileged to be able to create something I absolutely love and enjoy so much.”