One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (Retellings, Myths & Legends)

I actually bought the book for my 9 year-old son. My son stopped reading after 2 - 3 pages..he thought it was boring. However, I started reading and I found the book very interesting! I think the Arabian Nights stories I knew were Disney versions. I am sure there are children (10+ I guess) who will love the book but I think it's a good book for adults as well.

What an entertaining book these classic stories have been for ages. I read them as a youngster and now again at age 60 - and have in fact enjoyed them more this time! So young or old there is much to delight in and carry one away to exotic locations and adventures...wouldn't mind having my own Genie!

This book tells all the Arabian Nights tales. Someone commented that it is too violent for children. Too violent? Have they read Roald Dahl or Hllaire Belloc's poem 'Matilda who cried wolf and was burned to death'? Children LOVE that kind of thing because there's a moral in the story/poem which children can understand. So it is with the story of Scheherazade - she outwits the Sultan. Please don't be off-put by other woolly comments: this book is perfect for growing children. Use your intelligence as to how young to introduce these stories to a child. If the adventures of Sinbad engages them, you can safely read the remainder. I am building a library for my great nephew and would expect him to enjoy The Arabian Nights by the time he is seven or eight which is when I read them. This book is NOT the Sir Richard Burton translation which borders the pornographic. The Arabian Nights collection goes back to ancient times and over the years has been watered down to be perfect for young minds. The book arrived VERY well packed and super-fast. THANK YOU VERY MUCH INDEED

Definitely Arabian stories...includes Ali Baba, Sinbad and other classical tales from Arabian Nights. Promises original telling and yes it does, I just found it a bit difficult to differentiate between some names as they were so similar (at one point I didn't know who the storyteller was!). But a good read nonetheless, can be for teenagers and above only though.

I have purchased a variety of books written by MCCaughrean and she is a truly wonderful author who appeals to both adults and children. My favourite book is 1001 nights and this version wAs fabulous. I would highly recommend this text to teachers and parents.

As a primary teacher I have used this book to great effect in the classroom. The short format of the stories make them ideal to slot into the few minutes I manage to scrape together to read to my class. I also can allow the children to choose the story randomly by asking them to choose the number, which they love. Their favourite so far is The Tale of The Little Beggar, which had them in stitches!

Warning: Contain spoiler of the book I was interested in this book because these stories had been made famous with various adaptations. Through this book, I would like to go back to the root of these stories and read the "original" for myself. Sadly I didn't enjoy the book as much as I would have liked. It is not the writing; it is not the stories. Rather it is the underlying morals of the stories that I struggle with. First and foremost, the frame story of King Shahryar is a brutal man. For whatever reasons, marrying a wife for one night and then killing her in the next morning before she had a chance to cheat on him, just because his pride had been bruised, he was insecure in love, and he was in a position to commit such dreadful crimes against young girls without consequences as a king cannot be condoned or romanticised. How can a king be "wise and good" as praised in the book when he was depleting his kingdom of young and beautiful girls, and when he could not straighten out his thinking? The frame story therefore troubles me. It's tragic and plangent. It speaks of the longing for love that can't be found, prompting an apparently rational reaction to protect one's pride which ironically ruins the basis for any possibility of very thing that one is longing for. The flip side of love is hate - the irony is that in love, people are still selfish. Fundamentally, most people love, wanting to be loved. When love is not reciprocated, one turns the face of love to rage. At the end of the day, is that real love - that obsession and possession followed by the insecurity? Shahrazad was the heroine in the story. Her courage and wits not only saved herself but also prevented other girls from being killed as long as she occupied the place next to the king at night. How about the stories that she told? Is there anything to commend for? I find there is little soul in them. It does not speak much of virtues. What they expose best is human wickedness. Take the Keys of Destiny for example. It is a story well-structured and neat – the literature techniques are good. Yet the characters do not appeal. The sheikh set out to find a slave and not a partner or travel companion. He found Hasan. He intentionally caused Hasan suffering and misery while he pretended to be kind all along! What a cruel deception throughout the whole time when the sheikh was alive with Hasan who only learnt the truth in the sheikh’s death. When Hasan found out how the misfortune came to him, he did not stop the sultan from falling into the same fate out of a heart of revenge. The sultan out of greed fell into the same trap. Although there may be lessons to be learnt from the story, the human characters are dark and nothing is uplifting. The frame story concludes with King Shahryar “falling in love” with Shahrazad, and yet I am not convinced as there was no enlightenment, no change in fundamental character and no remorse in what he had done before. To the very end, King Shahryar still thought that he could wield his power as the king to behead anyone purely he did not like or he did not get his way with him or her. Violent temper was still his nature. I would not recommend the book to my children, as the human nature depicted is not exemplary, and in turn, the wits and humours, which it does have, cannot be enjoyed whole-heartedly. Finally this book calls upon Allah a lot. The stories therefore depict the relationship between the believers and Allah, although I cannot judge how authentic the depiction is.

My class loved this book. Tons of writing opportunities and links to classic 50's movies.

The book was as expected and delivered on time

I've heard a few of these stories before, but the ones I haven't are of the same caliber.

Parfait

Words cannot describe the fantastic quality of this collection of Arabic literature. But don't get the book just to read the tale of Ala al-Din (Aladdin) and his Wonderful Lamp, because the other tales included surpass this merely moderate one by far - although it's interesting to find out that a black midget is Aladdin's primary nemesis (upon who Disney's Jafar is based, apparently). The stories touch on such a wide variety of unusual topics: a man's visit to the kingdom of mermaids, a dead beggar getting tripped over again and again, a guy claiming to have several volcanoes in a portable bag, a Sultan's escape from a buffalo-faced woman in the presence of a group of pink ladies, and the marriage of a prince to a turtle. Insane stuff. My favorite story is The Everlasting Shoes by far. It's quite possibly the funniest thing I've ever read. It's about an old miser who's so cheap he never buys new shoes. He just patches up the pair he has whenever they get holes. The addition of so many patches naturally make his shoes bigger and bigger. Eventually the shoes become ridiculously huge and heavy and smelly, and they make a lot of noise as the miser walks. The scene of the shoes being thrown into the river and getting caught in the millwork is well worth the price of the entire book. There's a story in here that looks VERY much like a mid-east version of Cinderella. Quite interesting. I am unable to tell how many liberties the author has taken in translating the tales, but they're definitely fun to read. There are tons of ancient day metaphors and funny insults like, "You flea on a cockroach's kneecap!" and "Son of a plank! Did you steal your brains from a table?" I really liked reading the misfortunes of the protagonist in the Keys of Destiny stories, and the nagging wives that appear sporadically are pretty darn funny. The things I didn't like about this book were very few. Only its frequent mentioning of Allah and the puzzling weakness of its 998th and 999th stories about a flying toy horse. I would recommend the Arabian Knights to anybody over the age of fifteen; probably because I was so surprised at the large amount of enjoyable humor.

Great new condition