The book reads very much like the western children’s story/song, “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly,” but in this Sufi inspired repetitive story, An old Farmer’s wife can’t get an apple out of a hole.  

The silliness starts right away when she wants to get a bird to fly down the hole to get it for her.  When the bird says, “tweet,” which means no, she deems him naughty and then moves on to asking a cat to jump on the bird, to get the bird to get the apple.  The funny thing is the chain of events is funny and illogical at points. She wants water in a puddle, to put out a fire to burn a rope, the rope to tie up a bee keeper, and so on.  Luckily the wind finally blows the apple out of the hole and they all live happily ever after.

The book supposedly is to teach patience, I am hoping to use it when I do a lesson on thinking outside the box and how sometimes that is great, but the trick is knowing when it might also be easier to reach down and pick up the apple.  

The book is AR 3.4 and 32 pages.  Many versions are dual languages.  The pictures are great with the abiya wearing woman and the chunky cartoonish side characters making the silly story fun to read a loud.  There is nothing “islamic” other than the illustrations showing the woman in hijab, and the author being a well known sufi writer who uses lessons from the Sufi tradition to teach lessons to children.