Reviews

The Farmer's Wife by Idries Shah

tomgraves's review against another edition

5.0

I read the bilingual Urdu/English version this afternoon as part of my quest to become conversational in Urdu. This was exactly what I had been looking for as a reading material of around my level. Easy to understand but with one or two new words per page. It is difficult to find level appropriate Urdu reading material and this fills that gap. Furthermore the story and illustration is funny and charming, and the cumulative, recursive form of the story helps reinforce the vocabulary.

mldavisreads's review against another edition

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

3.5

Bilingual children's picture book.  This cumulative tale starts with a farmer's wife who is picking apples.  When one apple falls into a hole, she asks the bird to get it for her.  When the bird refuses, she asks the cat to jump at the bird, and so on and so on until many animals, the beekeeper, and several inanimate objects are involved.  I can see how it would be fun to read aloud with kids who could help name the animals on each page (with some sort of props to keep them in order). The illustrations are bright and colorful, in a classic folklore style.  I was not a fan of the woman basically cursing everything that crossed her path and was a bit annoyed that she still got the fallen apple back.  I guess my modern mentality of female empowerment and STEM learning would rather have had her brainstorm ways to get the apple out.  But maybe that could be done as an extension activity with a class.

Digital copy provided by the publisher, Hoopoe Books, for Multicultural Children's Book Day 2021. #Readyourworld.