A Donkey Reads by Muriel Mandell

This is a very cute Turkish folktale. It's starts out as most folktales do with a poor villager who barely has enough to feed this family. The village has just been captured by the Mongols and when their leader tells everyone they must bring the best thing they have before him as a gift or they will beaten, the poor villager doesn't know what to do. His wife tells him to take their old donkey because it can't even carry the children anymore it is so broken down and old. The Villager takes his poor old donkey in front of the leader and the leader gets very angry at him because his gift is not good enough. He is going to beat the villager until a wiseman steps forward and promises the Mongol leader that he can teach the donkey to read, then he will be worth something. And so the story goes, you get to find out if the wiseman really does teach the donkey to read, and just how he does it. Very cute story that all young children should enjoy. The illustrations are very nice, very classic looking. This was an advance readers copy through Netgalley.com from Star Bright Books.