#ReadYourWorld

My kids love a good cumulative story! In the vein of There Was An Old Lady Who… books, The Farmer’s Wife by Idries Shah builds on each line to create a chain of events involving a farmer’s wife, an apple, a bird, a cat, a dog, a bee, a beekeeper, a rope, a fire, water, and a cow. It makes for a great read aloud book, especially if the reader makes the effort to emphasize the farmer’s wife’s demands. We had a good laugh the first time we read this together! The illustrations by Rose Mary Santiago are absolutely gorgeous and evocative, and gave us loads to talk about.

We were generously gifted a bilingual English-Spanish copy of this book by Hoopoe Books for Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2021 in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed reading it to my kids in both languages, and the translations are great. Bilingual books are really important for multilingual families - for us it means that both parents can participate in storytime AND the kids get the benefit of hearing a story in two of their languages.

This was my first foray into Idries Shah’s work, and I can’t wait to read more. There is no better way to introduce different stories from different places to our children than through books. The Farmer’s Wife is a traditional Sufi tale, and teaches children about creative problem solving and perseverance in a fun way. I love how Hoopoe Books have a mission to publish books from different areas of the world that allow our children to learn to think in creative ways: I think any parent or teacher would appreciate this! I’m looking forward to discovering more stories like this one. 

Also!! The most exciting thing that I discovered is that The Farmer’s Wife AND a bunch of other Hoopoe books are available in many bilingual versions, and not just in English/other language combinations. Dari, Pashto, Urdu, or Arabic, combined with English, German, or French anyone? French only? Yes please! It’s quite hard for us to find children’s books in French only, so this is a huge plus for me!! (All of the books are beautifully illustrated too).