How to use this Page

The Greedy Sparrow: An Armenian Tale
By Lucine Kasbarian
Illustrated by Maria Zaikina
Marshall Cavendish Children
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5821-0
Ages 4-8
On shelves now.

As a children’s librarian in New York City I am expected to have a full knowledge of existing children’s literature as it pertains, not just to the American publishing industry, but to the world at large. If a group of unusually tall Norwegian women come in asking for children’s books by their countrymen, I am supposed to know how to locate the nearest Jo Nesbo/P.C. Abjorsen title. I have gaps, though. Whole swaths of continents where my knowledge is lacking or useless. For example, let’s say you walked up to my desk and asked me to produce as many Armenian children’s folktales as possible. I could do it, I suppose, if I did a catalog search. We might have some. But I wouldn’t be able to name them off the top of my head. The Greedy Sparrow fills in that gap nicely. An original composition based on a classic Armenian oral tale, author Lucine Kasbarian and Russian illustrator Maria Zaikina bring to life a story unfamiliar but to a few Americans. Want to bulk up your Armenian folklore for a spell? Seek ye no further than this.

A little Author’s Note appears on the publication page of this book, which I appreciated. It states right from the start, “Armenian fables begin with ‘Once there was and was not’.” After we read these words we begin our tale. A sparrow with a thorn in its foot asks a baker to remove it. The woman does so gladly, burning it up afterwards, but when the sparrow returns and asks for his thorn back she has nothing to give him. Pleased, he takes some bread instead. Next, he visits a shepherd with a flock and asks the man to look after his bread. The fellow does for a time, but eats the bread when hunger overtakes him. As payment, the sparrow takes a sheep. Through these sneaky methods the sparrow exchanges a sheep for a human bride, a human bride for a lute, and finally he loses the lute, his ultimate prize, when he falls from a thorn tree. Lute gone. New thorn in his foot.

I have a tendency to lament the death of the picture book folktale on a nice and regular bi-annual schedule. Compared to the last few decades, folktales and fables are publishing at the lowest ebb seen in years. Each season I scramble to find as many as I can, often disappointed by the results. Maybe that’s why I glommed onto The Greedy Sparrow as quickly as I did. Here we have an honest-to-goodness folktale, retold for contemporary audiences, and unknown to a whole chunk of them. Kasbarian says in her bookflap that she learned to recite this story from her father who learned it from his grandmother, an Armenian storyteller. Clearly such talents are genetic since Kasbarian’s writing flows easily. You leap effortlessly from situation to situation until the end. Happily, the author sees no need to put some kind of moral capper on the tale. All she needs to write is the final sentence: “But as the sparrow rocked in glee, he lost his footing, and the lute fell, too, leaving the sparrow as he began … with nothing but a thorn in his foot!” Batta bing, batta boom. Nothing more need be said.