Nasreddine

Variants of "The Miller, His Son, and Their Donkey" date back at least to the Middle Ages and to traditional Middle Eastern tales. Here Nasreddine is the son of wise Mustafa, who uses the story's events to teach the boy an important lesson. Four times the two set out for market with their donkey; each time passersby complain: "A lazy man...makes his son slosh through the mud"; but when "children ride, and their elders walk...Fathers don't have any authority." Each time, Nasreddine is so disheartened by the criticism that he runs home. He suggests that they both ride, only to have old men complain that "some people can be so horrible to their animals"; when both walk, children laugh at them. There's a culture-revealing specificity in the goods they're taking to market (dates, wool, chickens), in the critics, in the repartee, and in such details as Nasreddine walking barefoot to save his slippers from the mud. In Dautremer's comical and evocative art, double-page-spread scenes, vibrant with organic-looking architecture and creative perspectives, alternate with pages of expressively elongated figures on pure white. In the end what Nasreddine learns is explicit -- "You can't be afraid that other people will judge you" -- but it's a truth Mustafa has wisely let him discover for himself. An entertaining variant on a familiar tale, gentler in action yet more pointed in meaning. (The brief, generalized note gives no specific source.) joanna rudge long