“Visually thrilling” – The Wall Street Journal

The storytelling traditions of Morocco burst into brilliant swaths of gold and lapis lazuli in the visually thrilling pages of Evan Turk’s “The Storyteller” (Atheneum, 48 page, $18.99). Set in modern times, this picture book for 4- to 8-year-olds begins by evoking a past when stories spun by fabulists brought people together with a force as refreshing and life-giving as the kingdom’s many fountains. “But as the kingdom grew and life became easier…,” we read, “the voices of storytellers were drowned by noise and silenced by age, and one by one the fountains dried up.”

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It is in this sere, story-famished Morocco that a thirsty young boy receives, from a stranger, a brass cup. If he can find water, the cup will allow him to share. Soon the boy encounters a withered old man, who spins a tale of drought and treachery and whose words, to the boy’s amazement, leave his cup brimming with water. Over the next days, the man unfurls more stories, each connected to the first, each a wellspring of fresh water. So when a fierce jinni in the form of a sandstorm arrives to menace the city, the boy and the storyteller know what to do: Like Scheherazade, they forestall destruction by telling stories to the jinni. Mr. Turk’s illustrations lend a strange beauty to this tale-within-a-tale-within-a-tale.

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—Wall Street Journal