There was a time, best beloved, when folktales and fairytales were common. Every other season they filled the publishers’ lists and librarians bought such books in droves. My own library’s children’s room contains a large and impressive folktale section, where parents can grab anything from your standard Snow White tale to perhaps a lesser known story like Anansi and the Moss-covered Rock. That particular folktale, by the way, is by one Eric A. Kimmel, a man who has spent much of his life finding and retelling classic folktales from a variety of different cultures for the American audience. Sadly, I estimate that in 2010 the number of folktales published for kids will, if we’re lucky, come to about ten. Max. And of those ten, how many will be any good? Well, at the very least you can count on Joha Makes a Wish. Adapted by the aforementioned Mr. Kimmel and illustrated by the too-little-known Omar Rayyan, Joha is one of those stories that remind you why we like folktales so much in the first place. They amuse, they inform, and they give us glimpses into cultures other than our own. In this particular case, the Middle East.
On a trip to Baghdad our hero Joha attempts to take a nap against an ancient wall. This doesn’t go so well, though, when the wall collapses behind him, revealing a stick and a scroll that proclaims, “You have found a wishing stick.” Delighted, Joha wishes for new shoes, only to find his old ones gone. A wish for the stick to disappear glues it to his hand. A wish to ride a donkey finds him carrying the animal instead. And you can pretty much guess what happens when he attempts to remove the sultan’s wart. After an encounter with a clever merchant the two realize that he’s been holding the stick upside down. Joha returns to the sultan to remove the copious warts, then finds his stick co-opted by the greedy ruler. Riding a small donkey away at the end, Joha speculates whether or not he should have told the sultan how to use the stick. In the end, it’s evident that he did not.
In his Author’s Note at the start of the book, Kimmel explains a little bit about your classic Joha tale. Joha’s a fool character, much like Jack in European tales. Kimmel ties him into a couple other characters, including Sancho Panza, suggesting that Cervantes got the idea for Sancho when he heard the Joha stories that circulated when he was in a Turkish prison. In Jewish tales, your fool character is either a schlemiel or a schlimazel. In this particular story, Joha is clearly on the schlimazel side of things. He’s a victim, until he can take charge of his problem and then foist it onto someone else. You sympathize with the guy, but at the same time there’s a certain bit of schadenfreude watching him carrying a donkey or fleeing from the authorities on foot.
Congratulations to 
thanks Eric!
You're so welcome!Any excuse to post this beautiful picture!