Book picks similar to
Indian Tales by Shenaaz Nanji


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childrens
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The Sigh


Marjane Satrapi - 2004
    Rose is one of three daughters of a rich merchant who always brings gifts for his girls from the market. One day Rose asks for the seed of a blue bean, but he fails to find one for her. She lets out a sigh in resignation, and her sigh attracts the Sigh, a mysterious being that brings the seed she desired to the merchant. But every debt has to be paid, and every gift has a price, and the Sigh returns a year later to take the merchant's daughter to a secret and distant palace.

Little Roja Riding Hood


Susan Middleton Elya - 2013
    But Grandma's no fool and Roja's no ordinary chica. They send that hungry lobo packing with a caliente surprise! This sassy retelling of Little Red Riding Hood has accessible Spanish rhymes and fresh illustrations, with hip cultural details throughout.

Duffy and the Devil


Harve Zemach - 1973
    The Zemachs have interpreted the folk tale which the play dramatized, recognizable as a version of the widespread Rumpelstiltskin story. Its main themes are familiar, but the character and details of this picture book are entirely Cornish, as robust and distinctive as the higgledy-piggledy, cliff-hanging villages that dot England's southwestern coast from Penzance to Land's End.The language spoken by the Christmas players was a rich mixture of local English dialect and Old Cornish (similar to Welsh and Gaelic), and something of this flavor is preserved in Harve Zemach's retelling. Margot Zemach's pen-and-wash illustrations combine a refined sense of comedy with telling observation of character, felicitous drawing with decorative richness, to a degree that surpasses her own past accomplishments.Duffy and the Devil is a 1973 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year and Outstanding Book of the Year, a 1974 National Book Award Finalist for Children's Books, and the winner of the 1974 Caldecott Medal.

The Way Meat Loves Salt: A Cinderella Tale from the Jewish Tradition


Nina Jaffe - 1998
    One day, the rabbi asks his children a powerful question: "How much do you love me?" His older daughters profess their love in gold and diamonds, but his youngest daughter, Mireleh, declares she loves her father the way meat loves salt. For this remark, she is banished from her father's home. In this flavorful Jewish Cinderella tale, Mireleh's courageous journey is peppered with a perfect blend of magic and romance, leading to a reconciliation with her beloved father. Lavishly illustrated in Louise August's bold linocuts, The Way Meat Loves Salt will make a wonderful gift for the Jewish holidays.

Pretty Salma: A Little Red Riding Hood Story from Africa


Niki Daly - 2006
    But cunning Mr. Dog tricks Salma, and before she knows it, he’s wearing her stripy ntama, her pretty white beads, and her yellow sandals. And he’s on his way to Granny’s house! African culture and flavor infuse this inventive retelling of a favorite fairy tale, and the vibrant lively illustrations bring it to life. The result is a story that combines new and old and spans cultures as successfully as it has spanned the centuries.

Rapunzel


Paul O. Zelinsky - 1997
    Zelinsky has once again with unmatched emotional authority, control of space, and narrativecapability brought forth a unique vision for an age-old tale. Few artists at work today can touch the level at which his paintings tell a story and exert their hold.Zelinsky's retelling of Rapunzel reaches back beyond the Grimms to a late-seventeenth-century French tale by Mlle. la Force, who based hers on the Neapolitan tale Petrosinella in a collection popular at the time. The artist understands the story's fundamentals to be about possessiveness, confinement, and separation, rather than about punishment and deprivation. Thus the tower the sorceress gives Rapunzel here is not a desolate, barren structure of denial but one of esoteric beauty on the outside and physical luxury within. And the world the artist creates through the elements in his paintings the palette, control of light, landscape, characters, architecture,interiors, costumes speaks to us not of an ugly witch who cruelly imprisons a beautiful young girl, but of a mother figure who powerfully resists her child's inevitable growth, and of a young woman and man who must struggle in the wilderness for the self-reliance that is the true beginningof their adulthood.As ever, and yet always somehow in newly arresting fashion, Paul O. Zelinsky's work thrillingly shows us the events of the story while guiding us beyond them to the truths that have made it endure.

The Nightingale


Fiona Black - 1844
    . . Those words conjure up the aura of timeless children's stories, the kind of tales told in our comprehensive line of Children's Classics. Accompanied with exquisite illustrations specially commissioned for this line, each book is a hardcover, elegant little treasure with a deluxe four-color bronzed jacket. At $6.95, they are an affordable answer for first-class gift giving and collecting. And to make them even more attractive to your customers, we offer a variety of assortment and display options.

Seven Spools of Thread: A Kwanzaa Story


Angela Shelf Medearis - 2000
    When their father dies, he leaves an unusual will: by sundown, the brothers must make gold out of seven spools of thread or they will be turned out as beggars.

John Henry


Julius Lester - 1994
    It's a deadly contest of man-vs-machine written with such power that this African-American folk hero becomes as awesome as a force of nature, yet as familiar as an older brother. Pinkney's stunning art shows John Henry's energy bursting from nature. Full color.

Just So Stories


Rudyard Kipling - 1902
    The Butterfly That Stamped, and How the Alphabet Was Made..

Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox: The Great Pancake Adventure


Matthew Luckhurst - 2012
    But when Babe starts to feel sick from eating too many pancakes, the two realize that maybe the farm, with its variety of foods, is really the best place for them after all.The engaging typography and illustrations, combined with the humorous and lighthearted tone, show kids the importance of eating their veggies without giving heavy-handed lessons. An author’s note explains the origins of the Paul Bunyan story.

John Henry: An American Legend


Ezra Jack Keats - 1965
    in full color. The Caldecott Medalist's powerful classic is now reissued in a handsome paperback edition, as well as a library edition.

Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood


Mike Artell - 2001
    He presents no match for the spunky heroine and her quick-thinking cat TeJean, though, as they use some strong Cajun hot sauce to teach Claude a lesson he will never forget!The combination of hilarious rhyme and exaggerated art creates a highly original retelling of the classic fairy tale. A pronunciation guide/glossary accompanies a tempting dialect that begs to be read aloud or acted out again and again. This is Little Red Riding Hood as she's never been seen before: Cajun and ducky.

Why The Sky Is Far Away: A Nigerian Folktale


Mary-Joan Gerson - 1974
    The sky was once so close to the Earth that people cut parts of it to eat, but their waste and greed caused the sky to move far away.

The Girl Who Loved Caterpillars


Jean Merrill - 1992
    Izumi resists social and family pressures as she befriends caterpillars and other socially unacceptable creatures.