The Hungry Coat: A Tale from Turkey

We enjoy reading this book at night time with my 6 year old son. It really makes us laugh imagining literal meaning of the jokes while learning real life lessons. I think my son really enjoys it more than me!

It makes it easy to teach the real life lessons while having real fun.

We are Americans visiting Turkey for several months. We enjoy Turkey and her very friendly people very much and wanted a gift for an 11 year old American child. This book has a nice moral and the illustrations are extremely nice. It is really a parable, not even a short story.

We wanted something to begin, in a small way, to let our young friend and her family to have a nice experience with another culture. Particularly with Turkish and Eastern Culture.

We have found the vast majority of Turks to be friendly, gracious and thoughtful, but if you only hear about Arab Fundamentalist Terrorists, one can get entirely the wrong idea about the Middle East. Just as not all Americans are like Jeffrey Dahmer, nor all people from the UK like Jack the Ripper.

If you have not seen any of the thoughtful parables from the Middle East, you may enjoy visiting your library or Google. Do a Google > Idries Shah Sufis <. He has several enjoyable collections of Sufi wisdom. And there must be MANY more things available.

"The Hungry Coat" is but a single parable, wonderfully illustrated, while the works by Shaw that I've read are small collections of dozens of parables with few, if any, illustrations.

This book is a truly amazing book that makes kids and adults laugh while teaching a truly important life lesson: It's not the clothes that make the man but the person inside who counts, or as Nazrettin Hoca, the main character, states it "he who wears heaven in his heart is always well dressed". It is a must have for all households!

This book will expose you humors of different cultures. Childrens grows up with the stories of Hodja in Middle East, Balkans, and all the way to India. And, it is fun to read it!