How Many Donkeys?: An Arabic Counting Tale - Hardcover

MacDonald, Margaret Read; Taibah, Nadia Jameel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807534242 ISBN 13: 9780807534243

Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company, 2009

Synopsis

Jouha is loading his donkeys with dates to sell at the market. How many donkeys are there? His son helps him count ten, but once the journey starts, things change. First there are ten donkeys, then there are nine! When Jouha stops to count again, the lost donkey is back. What's going on? Silly Jouha doesn't get it, but by the end of the story, wise readers will be counting correctly - and in Arabic! Margaret Read MacDonald and Nadia Jameel Taibah are the tellers of this funny tale from the Middle East. The sunny pictures were painted by Carol Liddiment.

About this title

About the Authors

Margaret Read MacDonald loves folktales and travels the world telling wonderful stories and teaching others how to share them. How Many Donkeys? An Arabic Counting Tale won the Best Foreign Children's Book Award at the 2010 Sharjah International Book Fair. She lives in Seattle, Washington. www.margaretreadmacdonald.com

Nadia Jameel Taibah grew up hearing Saudi folktales told by her mother, a talented storyteller. She works at King Abdul-Aziz University, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, helping special education teachers. Nadia lives in Jeddah with her husband and son.

Carol Liddiment lives in England, in the Suffolk countryside with her two sons. As a child she spent much of her time riding horses and adopting wild animals! Now she spends her time illustrating books for children.

From the Back Cover

When Jouha counts the ten donkeys carrying his dates to market, he repeatedly forgets to count the one he is riding on, causing him great consternation. Includes numbers and numerals one to ten in Arabic and English transliteration, and a note on the origins and other versions of the story.

Reviews

Kindergarten-Grade 2—In this Saudi folktale, Jouha loads ten donkeys with dates to sell at the market. As he rides along, he counts nine and believes one is lost. Yet when he walks, he counts all ten and is grateful that the missing donkey is back. Alternately lucky and unlucky, depending on whether he walks or rides, Jouha sells his dates and returns home with all of his donkeys. Arabic numbers from one to ten are written from right to left at the bottom of the pages, both in Arabic and in English transliteration, and invite youngsters to count along with the silly date merchant. (Readers can listen to Taibah pronounce these numbers on MacDonald's Web site.) Full-color paintings expand the repetitive text, tracing the journey of ten distinctly different donkeys across the desert landscape and indicating the passage of time with the position of the sun, the color of the sky, and the size of the shadows underneath the donkeys. In an opening note, MacDonald documents the many variants of this folktale, including Denys Johnson-Davies's Goha the Wise Fool (Philomel, 2005), which is set in Egypt. For those libraries with large folklore collections or those looking for unusual counting books.—Mary Jean Smith, Southside Elementary School, Lebanon, TN END

Edition details

• Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807534242
• ISBN 13: 9780807534243
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Liddiment Carol
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32