Age 6-9

This delightful collection of nine Iraqi tales of varying length would be a pleasure to read aloud, with its variety of characters’ voices and its clear and lively style. The happy-ever-after fables are full of wisdom and clever tricks that drive robbers to reform, teach a miser a lesson, keep elephants away from a drinking pool, humble a boastful tailor, enable a husband to control his anger . . . Without being heavily didactic, the stories teach lessons about being kind and forgiving rather than greedy, selfish or envious. They convey an exotic realm of caliphs and princes, and of magic and talking animals; a world in which wedding feasts include “delicious sherbets”, and the guests bring “silver mirrors, and inlaid trays, and silks from Damascus”. Laird’s introduction paints a picture of the beauty of Baghdad and Basra before the war, and of the simple huts and quiet villages in the countryside. Apart from being fine entertainment, these stories reveal a culture that it is a crime to destroy. Other volumes in this likable series, retold by different authors, offer Palestinian, Jewish and Polish tales.

A FISTFUL OF PEARLS and Other Tales from Iraq by Elizabeth Laird, illustrated by Shelley Fowles
(Frances Lincoln £4.99)

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