Whisper of the East

by Franziska Meiners (Compiler)

Overview

This enchanting collection of Arabian folk tales will take you into the fascinating world of the East.

The tales are charmingly retold and illustrated by Franziska Meiners and will provide hours of pleasure for the whole family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735843233
Publisher:	NorthSouth Books
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.15(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Franziska Meiners interest is in the exchange of cultures and the role that media design can play in bringing about cultural understanding. This was the motivation behind her breathtaking first children's book, The Whisper of the East, She lives in Cologne, where she works as a freelance designer and illustrator.

Editorial Reviews

The illustrations—in a tricolor palette of red, turquoise, and white, created digitally and by hand—add a modern feel to these traditional stories.

Booklist - Amina Chaudhri

...magical collection of six folk stories from the fascinating world of the East...

OmniLibros

2018-06-25
A book of Arabic folktales and fables with minimalist illustrations, translated from the German.Meiners attempts to provide readers with a story for each part of the Middle East—or, as she describes the region in her foreword, "Arabia." Varying in length, each story offers a moral or a lesson as a window into the native cultures of its characters. Although some plotlines are familiar, others are unique, such as the Palestinian story "A Little Camel," which takes readers into the underground world of the "Djinns," or "The Old Pair of Shoes," a story about a man who desperately tries to rid himself of his unlucky shoes. Visually it shines. Meiners' style is minimalist and distinctive, using only cyan and magenta, sometimes overlaid to make brown, to create captivating illustrations. Culturally, however, it does not. While Meiners does offer some context to the stories and the region from which these tales are borrowed, her framing of the book around "Arabia"—a "magical world" and "distant lands"—falls into orientalist tropes of the Middle East that exoticize, simplify, and distort elements of the region's cultures. On a more granular level, the book has gaps and errors. Despite the inclusion of a Palestinian story, Palestine does not appear on the appended map, and although Iran is on the map, there is no Iranian story; most Iraqis do not speak Persian, as a note asserts; and "djinn" is a plural noun already. Beautiful but deeply flawed. (glossary, activities) (Folktales. 7-12)

Kirkus Reviews