The Arabian Nights

by Wafa' Tarnowska, Carole Hénaff (Illustrator)

Overview

"The volume's best feature is its lovely, detail-rich, color-saturated acrylic illustrations that incorporate traditional motifs" – The Horn Book Magazine

From Lebanese writer Wafa' Tarnowska and Spanish artist Carole Hénaff, this magnificent new edition of The Arabian Nights brings together famous and less familiar tales from A Thousand and One Nights and includes the frame story of Shahrazade and Shahriyar.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781846865688
Publisher:	Barefoot Books
Publication date:	09/01/2011
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.12(h) x 0.41(d)
Lexile:	920L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 11 Years

About the Author

Wafa’ Tarnowska is an award-winning writer, translator and storyteller. She was born in Lebanon and has worked and lived in several countries from India, to Australia, to the UAE as well as Cyprus and Lebanon. She currently lives between the UK and Poland, writing, translating books and documentaries and offering storytelling sessions in English and Arabic. Wafa' sees herself as a cultural bridge between East and West, and has also written the award-winning The Arabian Nights for Barefoot Books.

Carole Hénaff is inspired by her travels and is never without her sketchbook. She studied theatrical literature in Parish before moving to Barcelona to study graphic design and illustration. Carole has illustrated children's books in France and Spain, including Smara, which was awarded the Isaac Díaz Pardo prize for Best Illustrated Book, 2006.

Editorial Reviews

In a large, handsome format, Tarnowska offers six tales plus an abbreviated version of the frame story, retold in formal but contemporary language and sandwiched between a note on theNights'place in her childhood in Lebanon and a page of glossary and source notes. Rather than preserve the traditional embedded structure and cliffhanger cutoffs, she keeps each story discrete and tones down the sex and violence. This structure begs the question of why Shahriyar lets Shahrazade [sic] live if she tells each evening's tale complete, but it serves to simplify the reading for those who want just one tale at a time. Only the opener, "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," is likely to be familiar to young readers; in others a prince learns to control a flying "Ebony Horse" by "twiddling" its ears, contending djinn argue whether "Prince Kamar el Zaman [or] Princess Boudour" is the more beautiful (the prince wins) and in a Cinderella tale a "Diamond Anklet" subs for the glass slipper. Hénaff's stylized scenes of domed cityscapes and turbaned figures add properly whimsical visual notes to this short but animated gathering.(Folktales. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews