A pleasant surprise awaits young readers in The Birbal Tales, The Ninth Jewel of the Mughal Crown, which was awarded First Prize for Juvenile Fiction in the Deep South Writers Contest. There are so many wonderful books for very young children, but there is too little good literature for “middlings” from age seven to eleven. This book, which adults can enjoy as well as children, brings praises from a Harvard Professor to a Hollywood Producer. They agree the tales “sparkle like Kipling” and are “utterly enchanting.”Interestingly, although the tales are indeed charming and amusing, they are not fictional, but true stories of a wise man who really lived in long ago India in the palace of the Emperor Akbar. Birbal served his Emperor with wit and wisdom, and he became so renowned that even today parents and grandparents use these clever adventures as morality tales.
Biographical the tales may be, carried along on four hundred years of oral tradition, but they are not a translation, for this is the first time the story of Birbal and Emperor Akbar’s reign has been set down in print for readers in the West. And it has been brilliantly rendered. Each word of this original work has been polished like a gem. Birbal’s wisdom and clever solutions to human dilemmas are full of surprise endings and humor. Each chapter contains an individual tale that makes reading easy enough for young readers, and as well a delight for parents to read to them.
After a decade of questionable television characters aimed at this age group, it is a pleasure to find tales that reflect virtues which teachers find can use in edifying class discussions.
Authored and illustrated by a California writer well-known for his keen appreciation of other cultures, the original illustrations are especially appealing. (One bride-to-be has ordered 400 copies for gifts to her wedding guests!) The book was featured at the Frankfort Book Fair and has already received several awards. It will be distributed in all major bookstores by Alliance House, NY, after its June 2001 Publication Date. It is available in pre-publication at www.birbal.net.
From the North Carolina State Port Pilot Newspaper
Cameron Phillips
