Senor Parrot's Perch

Sindbad: From the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights Retold and Illustrated by Ludmila Zeman

Sindbad, or Sinbad, is one of the great characters of all literature. He sails mysterious seas of from Arabia to India and down the Horn of Africa. In every journey he encounters danger and escapes only by his wits. In many ways, he is the literary sailing rival of Homer’s Odysseus.

Sindbad comes to us from the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, which, according to legend, were told by Scheherazade to the evil king who marries her. Retold and illustrated by Ludmila Zeman, the tales are magical as ever. Her spare language is perfectly matched by her beautiful and engaging illustrations, strongly influenced by Persian art, making this book one to pore over time and time again for it’s detail and beauty.

Zeman has two other Sindbad books to go with this which I haven’t read. They are Sindbad in the Land of Giants and Sindbad’s Secret.

As an extra comment, Nikolai Rimsky Korsokov, a Russian composer from around 100 years ago, wrote a beautiful piece called Scheherazade . It was the first piece of classical music that I loved and probably the reason I continued to listen. It is sensuous and evocative of the stories and has a great sea scene with Sindbad depicted in one of the movements. Listen to it just once and you’ll never forget the voice of Scheherazade, represented by a violin, as she weaves her stories together, night by night.

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3. The Snicket Thicket Thickens or How do you choose what’s right?
4. Sidney & Norman: A Tale of Two Pigs – Review
5. Books and the Bedtime Routine

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 4:49 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.