Summary: This is a story of a bird who is known for its singing. People would write stories of this bird and one story made its way to the emperor. The emperor wanted to hear the bird sing. A servant sought after the bird and brought him back to the emperor and the bird would sing to him everyday. Soon the emperor made a mechanical toy of the bird that sang just like the nightingale and he forgot about the real nightingale. When the emperor went to put the toy in the bird cage the nightingale flew out and escaped the emperor because it was not being shown love anymore. The emperor became very sick and all he wanted was to hear the real nightingale. The bird over heard of the emperor's sickness and came to his aid and sung to him. The emperor was cured. The bird from then on would sing to the emperor every night at his window.

Personal Reaction: Reading this story made me think of people and myself and how we take things for granted. Also a feeling of, "you don't know what you have until you have lost it." Moral to this story I feel is hold onto things that are most important to you and don't take advantage of those prized things.

Classroom Extension: A good project would be a show and tell and each student would have to say how that possession is important to them.

The Nightingale, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.

After being signally unimpressed by Jerry Pinkney's retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Nightingale, in which the setting has been shifted from China to Morocco, I've been trying to figure out why it is that some fairy-tale adaptations involving a major cultural or national switch are successful, and others are not. Debbie Allen's Brothers of the Knight, for instance, is a wonderful retelling of the Brothers Grimm tale, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, transplanting the story from Germany to the African-American community of Harlem. Pinkney himself created a lovely edition of The Little Match Girl, set in turn-of-the-century America, rather than the more traditional nineteenth-century European city.

So why do such adaptations appeal to me, when this one leaves me cold? Part of it, of course, is that I'm a bit of a traditionalist, and while I recognize that adaptation and borrowing is a necessary part of the folk process - that, indeed, it is the folk process - I tend to prefer the tales (and songs) that are as close to the "original" as possible, whether that be the text of a literary fairy-tale, or the unexpurgated version of a folk-tale. So those adaptations which diverge widely from that original should do so for some good reason, or I tend to be unimpressed.

Debbie Allen's tale of the twelve dance-loving sons of a strict Harlem minister, for example, clearly draws inspiration from the idea of forbidden musical expression - a theme that has great significance in African-American history - and makes a connection between two traditions some might think have nothing in common. Likewise, Pinkney highlights the continuing significance of The Little Match Girl by transplanting it to another continent and time, demonstrating that children have suffered the ill effects of poverty and neglect in many different societies.

What then, does this Moroccan version of The Nightingale tell me? According to his afterword, that Pinkney and his editors wanted to set the tale in Africa, rather than China. No real reason for such a transplant is given, although the author does mention that he double-checked to make sure that nightingales do live on the continent. As far as I can tell, nothing in the tale spoke to Pinkney (or his editors) of Africa, nothing sparked a particularly Moroccan chord, suggesting some unexpected commonality. That being so, the change in setting struck me as rather arbitrary. It's admirable that Pinkney wanted to highlight the racial diversity of Morocco (again, according to his afterword), but wouldn't a traditional Moroccan tale have done that, while also exposing young children to another tradition? ( )

I always love a story about a king who learns humility. This one details an emperor who sends away for the nightingale because of its beautiful song. However, it is not long before the real bird is replaced with a machine, and the emperor realizes the grave mistake he has made.

This story seems to me to hew very closely to what I remember of the original Nightingale by Andersen... but then, I don't have it directly in front of me to compare. Regardless, the only big change I see is moving the setting to Morocco instead of China (which is just as well, China was only chosen as a shorthand for "far away and mysterious", and who doesn't know all about China by now?) and having a "Fixer-of-all-Things" instead of a clockmaker.

The illustrations are colorful and lovely, and the story is as touching as always, with the classic Andersen theme of valuing the real above the fake. ( )

The story of a nightingale bird that sand the most beautiful songs, ever. The bird becomes so famous throughout the land that the king demands her to be found. The bird meets the king and sings for everyone. Soon the nightingale was replaced by a gold and ruby covered singing bird. After the real bird disappears, the gold bird breaks. When the king was about to die, he needs music, and the nightingale gave him just that and in the morning the king was alive and healthy.