For some artists, they goal is to do more than merely hang art on a gallery or museum wall. Local Port Jefferson artist Amal Karzai uses the combination of charcoal and watercolor to create fun, educational and beautifully illustrated books for both children and young adults.

A graduate of The Academy Of Art in San Francisco and a current member of the Long Island Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group, Amal has previously exhibited her work at The Spinott Gallery, Gallery 242 and Toast Coffeehouse in lower Port Jefferson. Over the years, she has combined her love of art with her passion for education.

This past fall, Amal spent four months abroad in Ramallah where she participated in a Palestinian program in cooperation with Birzeit University, the Jerusalem Open University and the non-profit Tamer Institute. During her visit, Amal was in charge of overseeing a special program in which the local children wrote and published their own picture books. Two professional Swedish illustrators were on hand to give the children art classes so that each child could illustrate their own unique stories. Students were then further encouraged to blog about and critique one another’s work in a friendly and comfortable environment.

“So far five of the first set of core students have had children's books published since last December,” said Karzai.

Aside from helping the children to create their own, original stories, Karzai was able to collect and donate over 250 books to the children’s libraries overseas. Unlike children living in the United States, students in the Middle East also rely on what is known as the “Mobile Camel Library” – people who travel by real camels in order to deliver books to children living in the different camps and villages.

Amal's most recent childrens picture book entitled Hetaliye or “Rice Pudding”  is currently on display at the North Shore Library. She soon hopes to publish a young adult book entitled, Into Venice, which exemplifies her own passion for classical music, travel, art and the Italian Carnival.

“Fourteen-year old Anaka Twarpick is a violin student lured into the intense music of Igor Stravinsky. She’s beguiled by the suggestion that one of his lost compositions lies hidden in her local library—the hunt for it becomes Anaka’s obsession,” said Karzai. “Pulled through the Cardix Encyclopedia of Music and into a past Venetian Carnival of madmen, revelers, and baccala, Anaka meets a mysterious guide who knows an unsettling amount about her.”

She recently did three promotional images in pastels for The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference that will occur on June 3rd in Princeton, New Jersey.

“They were completed after I read the outstanding, inspirational novel Bread and Roses, Too by Katherine Paterson,” said Karzai.

She also plans to teach another illustration program in Ramallah in the near future and is working with a group of other illustrators on the second volume of a Steampunk anthology.

“This is the first time for me, but I was asked to create illustrations for their second volume after someone saw one of my pieces at a London art competition,” said Karzai.

You can view more of Mrs. Karzai’s work online  or follow along with her blog.