Overview

Four traveling merchants stumble upon a magnificent palace. Once inside, they meet a mysterious man dressed in blue, and things happen that make them each question their past experiences and assumptions. Through reading this imaginative tale, children learn that looks can be deceptive, and that there are deeper reasons to help others than we might at first assume. This story is one of many teaching stories collected and adapted by the Afghan philosopher Idries Shah, who told them to his own children to promote thinking skills and impart wisdom. These unique tales have their roots in Central Asia and the Middle East. They are published now, beautifully illustrated, so as to appeal to children in the lands in which they originated and to children in the West, the aims being to teach through humor and example and to draw attention to our commonalities.

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9781959393627

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Reviews

"""These teaching stories can be experienced on many levels. A child may simply enjoy hearing them; an adult may analyze them in a more sophisticated way. Both may eventually benefit from the lessons within."" - ""All Things Considered,"" National Public Radio (U.S.) ""They [teaching stories] suggest ways of looking at difficulties that can help children solve problems calmly while, at the same time, giving them fresh perspectives on these difficulties that help them develop their cognitive abilities"" - psychologist Robert Ornstein, Ph.D., in his lecture ""Teaching Stories and the Brain"" given at the U.S. Library of Congress ""Through repeated readings, these stories provoke fresh insight and more flexible thought in children. Beautifully illustrated."" - NEA Today: The Magazine of the National Education Association (U.S.) ""Shah's versatile and multilayered tales provoke fresh insight and more flexible thought in children."" - Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature ""These stories ... are not moralistic fables or parables, which aim to indoctrinate, nor are they written only to amuse. Rather, they are carefully designed to show effective ways of defining and responding to common life experiences."" - Denise Nessel, Ph.D., Senior Consultant with the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (U.S.), writing in Library Media Connection: The Professional Magazine for School Library Media Specialists (U.S.) ""These enchanting stories Shah has collected have a richness and depth not often encountered in children's literature, and their effect on minds young and old can be almost magical."" - Multicultural Perspectives: An Official Journal of the National Association for Multicultural Education (U.S.) ""In this tradition, the line between stories for children and those for adults is not as clear as it seems to be in Western cultures, and the lessons are important for all generations."" - School Library Journal (U.S.) ""Our experiences show that, while reading Idries Shah's stories can help children with reading and writing, the stories can also help them transcend fixed patterns of emotion and behaviour which may be getting in the way of learning and emotional well-being too. ... By flying under the radar of emotion and analytical thinking, the patterns contained within a story can shift children's perspective, to let them 'own' the meaning for themselves."" - Ezra Hewing, Head of Education at the mental-health charity Suffolk Mind in Suffolk, U.K.; and Kashfi Khan, who teaches English as an additional language at Hounslow Town Primary School in London ""... these are vibrant, engaging, universal stories...."" - Multicultural Perspectives: An Official Journal of the National Association for Multicultural Education (U.S.) ""... a series of children's books that have captivated the hearts and minds of people from all walks of life. The books are tales from a rich tradition of story telling from Central Asia and the Middle East. Stories told and retold to children, by campfire and candlelight, for more than a thousand years."" - NEA Today: The Magazine of the National Education Association (U.S.) ""... they not only entertain, but can be understood on many different levels and provide a form of 'nourishment for the brain' that can help develop thinking abilities and perceptions."" - Multicultural Perspectives: An Official Journal of the National Association for Multicultural Education (U.S.)"

Author Information

Idries Shah spent much of his life collecting and publishing Sufi classical narratives and teaching stories from oral and written sources in the Middle East and Central Asia. The tales he retold especially for children are published by Hoopoe Books in beautifully illustrated editions and have been widely commended - by Western educators and psychologists, the U.S. Library of Congress, National Public Radio and other media - for their unique ability to foster social-emotional development, thinking skills and perception in children and adults alike. Told for centuries, these stories express universal themes from the cultures that produced them, showing how much we have in common and can learn from each other. As noted by reviewers, such stories are more than just entertaining; familiarity with them provokes flexibility of thought, since each one contains levels of meaning that unfold in accordance with an individual's experience and understanding.

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