Children's Favorite Arabic Stories: Fables and Folk Tales from Across the Arabic Speaking World - Jehanne Moharram - ★★★

AUTHOR: Jehanne Moharram

ILLUSTRATOR: Chaymaa Sobhy

GENRE: Folktale Collection.

PUBLICATION DATE: June 17, 2025.

RATING: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: A collection of fables and fairy tales from Arabic-speaking lands. I enjoyed the variety of the stories and loved the illustrations. But the writing could have been smoother. Still, a good option for diverse storytelling for kids.

This book contains nine traditional fables and folktales from the Arabic-speaking world. Thus the stories aren’t limited to the Middle-East but also cover some parts of North Africa.

The books begins with the author’s note. Instead of just giving a generic writeup, she talks of the prevalence of storytelling in Arab cultures and her approach towards selecting and rewriting this classic tales. I like how she made sure that the stories were diverse in theme as well as geography. Some tales also have attractive magical components such as jinns and talking animals.

Many of the stories herein were already familiar to me. Then again, I have been reading folktales from across the world since my childhood. Today’s children are somehow not that exposed to global storytelling, so such books help bridge the gap across cultures. One story kids might find somewhat familiar is ‘The Little Red Fish and the Golden Slipper’, which is the Middle-Eastern version of Cinderella. (We only know of Charles Perrault’s French version, but variants of this fairy tale appear in a couple of Asian cultures from even earlier times.) I liked this story as well as ‘Morgana saves the day’ from Syria (unfortunately more known around the world as ‘Alibaba and the Forty Thieves’. I loved that the author decided to honour the true champion of the story, Morgana, in the title.) and ‘Noura and the Snake Master of Agradir’ from Morocco (one of only two stories that were new to me.)

Ideally, I should have been blown away by this collection because I enjoy reading folktales. But the writing style in this book was too bland for my liking. I could have overlooked the overly simplified structuring if the book were meant for only very young children. The official target age is 5-13 years, which is quite a large age range in terms of reading ability as well as comprehension. The book will probably be too straightforward for those above nine years of age.

Furthermore, the narrative is not fluid enough. There are staccato sentences about events but not much depth. Thus we see what happens, but we don’t often feel the emotions or the continuity between scenes. This makes several paragraphs seem jumpy. Basically, the original tales are too long and detailed to be crunched into just 6-8 pages each.

Finally, folktales and fables work better when they seem to speak directly to the readers. These tales come from a long history of oral storytelling, so even when written, their ‘feel’ has to be like a raconteur entertaining his audience. That vividness, that personal touch, is missing from this book.

This is a debut work, so many of these problems might just stem from writing inexperience. The attempt is valiant, but the end result perhaps needs more finetuning. The heart of the book is already in the right place, so just a little bit of jazzing up of the text would make a world of difference.

There is a helpful glossary at the end, detailing the meanings of the Arabic words as well as some of the tougher words used in the main text.

The illustrations help restore the reading experience to a great extent. The culturally accurate clothing, the bright digital colours, and the facial expressions on the characters are all visually appealing. I am not sure of the red hair and light eyes on a couple of the characters, but as they are from varied regions, not all of whose ethnic appearance is familiar to me, I give the illustrator the benefit of the doubt.

Overall, I liked the book but wasn’t really blown away by the plain writing style. Maybe children who aren’t aware of these stories might perhaps be able to enjoy their magic more than I did. The diversity and richness of these stories would also be interesting to those not exposed to these cultures.

Recommended to little folktale fans aged 5-8. Do note that some stories contain mentions of illness, physical attacks, cruelty, killings, and death. This might be troubling for sensitive readers.

My thanks to Tuttle Publishing for providing the DRC of “Children's Favorite Arabic Stories” via Edelweiss+. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.