How Many Donkeys?

September 15, 2009
Grades K-2 Folklorist MacDonald joins with Saudi educator Taibah to combine a tale about the miscounting of donkeys with a lesson in counting in Arabic. A note provides background about the story, popularized in the United States in Goha the Wise Fool by Denys Johnson-Davies (2005); versions appear in lore from many Middle Eastern and European countries as well as Puerto Rico, India, and Indonesia. Here, the text doesnt spell out why Jouha cant count correctly; it is up to alert readers to notice that each time he counts nine instead of ten, he is sitting on one of the animals. Bright, painterly illustrations depict the sunny desert setting; jewel-toned robes, turbans, and blankets enliven the sandy palette. Across the bottom of the pages, numbers from one to ten are spelled out and shown as numerals in English and Arabic, displayed from right to left in the Arabic style. A winning, witty, and surprisingly effective combination.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2009
K-Gr 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"

Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2010
In this story starring an Arabic folk character, Jouha the wise fool is always losing one of ten donkeys (the one that he's riding!). Numbers in Arabic from wahid (one) to ashara (ten) run along the bottom of the pages, allowing readers to chime in as Jouha searches for his animals. Desert-hued illustrations show details of traditional Middle Eastern life.

(Copyright 2010 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)