Folktales From Turkey: From Agri to Zelve Paperback – April 16, 2012

Folktales From Turkey is a collection of 26 tales, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each tale has a sidebar that gives factual information about places, foods, people, and more related at least tangentially to the folktale. My 9- and 11-year-old boys really enjoyed this book (though the younger one didn’t love the facts part). I highly recommend it as a family read aloud!

Excellent book for someone not familiar with folktales from Turkey! Neat illustrations and maps showing region from which the folktales originated. In English. I recommend the book very highly.

very fun reading, nice photosglad i found this little book, children and adults are enjoying the stories in here

'Anatolia' is a Greek term that historically and geographically refers to an area in the continent of Asia comprised mostly of the Republic of Turkey. In modern times it is Turkey - part of its territory, as well as part of its culture and history. Historically however Anatolia is steeped in the culture of many ancient peoples: Hittites, Phrygians, Lydians, Persians, Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians, Romans, Georgians, Seljuk Turks, and Ottomans. And so Folktales from Anatolia: From Agri to Zelve (the English translation uses the title Folktales from Turkey: From Agri to Zelve) with its twenty-six tales cannot fully encompass the richness of stories and culture from Turkey - but Serpil Ural hoped to give the rest of the world a peek. As a reader with not much exposure to Turkey's history or culture, I was very pleased with what she had been able to show me.Folktales from Turkey: From Agri to Zelve is a collection of stories that represents the many localities and peoples of Turkey. There was a story for each letter of the alphabet - twenty-seven stories out of the twenty-nine letters of the Turkish alphabet were represented in the Turkish version, and although there is no X in the Turkish alphabet, an "X-tra" story was made to represent X of the English alphabet and completed the twenty-six stories for the English translation. In the English version, the region represented in the story was highlighted in the map of Turkey, and an article was written on the sides of the folk tale that elaborated on the story's origin, the region it was from, an event in Turkish history that was mentioned in the story, or on a character or element in the story.I love fairy tales and folk tales! They were the stories that fostered my love for reading, and to this day I still look forward to hearing about folk tales and myths from different parts of the world. So it was with joy that I received my PDF copy of Folktales from Anatolia: From Agri to Zelve, relishing the thought of hearing "new" folk tales since I knew so few mythic stories from Turkey. I enjoyed reading Serpil Ural's collection immensely - the many cultures and peoples that comprised Turkey's history made for a rich mix of characters, mythic creatures, and origin stories. I liked seeing personages considered holy in monotheistic religions like Noah, Abraham, Paul, and Job as fairy tale characters, more like Jack who climbed a beanstalk rather than the usually bestowed 'holy prophet of God' stereotype. I found it refreshing to view Mount Ararat (or Agri as it is called in Turkey) as taking pity on Noah after the treatment Noah received from the other mountains and offering itself as a landing place. I enjoyed the story "The White-Bearded Old Man" because of the ethics used to judge the two sisters' actions - although the elder sister who gave the old man a dry crust of bread seemed like a "bad" sister compared to the younger one who who gave the old man the native sweet she made called 'halvah', in the end the pepper that grew in the elder sister's garden that quickly dried up is nowadays just as crucial a part of Turkish cuisine as the sweet pistachios that grew in the younger sister's garden.I could endlessly wax enthusiastic about how fond I am of the rhythm and language and tone of folk tales, but what made Folktales from Turkey: From Agri to Zelve a very worthy read was the combination of folk tale with the very informative side article that accompanied each story. Not only was the story of the "White-Bearded Old Man" an interesting fairy tale, but the accompanying article on the ancient city of Zeugma that lay underneath the current city of Gaziantep (where the folk tale originated) spoke of beautiful mosaic art found in 1987 among the ruins. Every new tale I read was matched with articles that talked about Turkey's history (the story of "Varto" had a matching article on the Ottoman Empire), interesting geological formations ("Zelve and Its Pigeons" had an article about the moon-like landscape of Cappadocia where Zelve is one of its cities), plants and produce unique to the region ("Tur and Unch" had an article about the bitter orange native to Turkey), and a lot more interesting information that gave me a better glimpse of Turkey and its culture.I would have been happy to have read a collection of Turkish fairy tales, but the reason I highly recommend Folktales from Turkey: From Agri to Zelve is for the wealth of information this collection offered a reader. No wonder the Turkish Ministry of Culture and the Ministry's Folklore Library staff supported the making of this book - Serpil Ural's efforts represented Turkey's stories and culture well, and I would encourage readers to discover more about Turkey through this book.

Serpil Ural, Folktales from Turkey, From Ağrı to Zelve.This charming little book presents a journey through Turkey, twenty-six folk tales, which take the reader through the whole of Anatolia (the peninsula that makes up the bulk of Turkey's land mass), are handsomely recounted in this admittedly slim tome. Alphabetically listed, each tale belongs to a specific region which can be located on a handy map in the top right corner. The stories are told in a naïve voice, befitting folktales and popular stories. The tales are also heavily illustrated, and even though the figures in the drawings appear a little wooden, their unpretentious clunkiness all but underlines the earthy charm of thee Turkish tales. The stories invite the reader into a different world, unknown to the casual reader and as a result, the handy glosses containing background information found on each page are a welcome source of information that can only heighten one's delight while reading this cute book. Armed with this additional yet essential information, the stories of Anatolia's lovers, ghosts, wrestlers . . . will come to life in the reader's imagination to create an image of Turkey that is, at the same time, pretty odd and incredibly seductive. I wouldn't be surprised if many readers of this slim volume will end up traveling to Turkey during their next vacation.