Mevlana İdris, who engages in literature from his years in law school till today, was born in Kahramanmaraş in 1966.

Mevlana İdris, who engages in literature from his years in law school till today, was born in Kahramanmaraş in 1966. When he realizes that bullets are more mentioned than violets in the world, he finds himself in children’ literature in order to gather people’s attention back to violets. His first three books from “Strange Animals” series are worth to consideration -and of course criticism. World’s Most Ladybug[1], The Romantic Fox and Flying Donkey. The first book can easily be distinguished from the others by the length. Even though it is an illustrated book, it is hard to accept it as a suitable text for preschool age because it has at least twenty lines on each page. What makes other two books similar to each other is that even if they have fabulous illustrations and warm and useful themes, they have negative message giving endings… The reader -which vocalizes the book- as a conscious adult, has to catch the negative messages in both books and write alternative endings that will turn them into positive messages. Otherwise, The Romantic Fox and Flying Donkey will teach children not to build kindness, goodness, friendship but to break them.

Before comparing these two books with each other, it is better to independently talk about The World’s Most Ladybug. As it can be understood from its name, the main character of the story is a ladybug that goes for a walk in the forest. He encounters different animals and each of these animals fills the blank in “I want all the … in the world” sentence, with objects which they love and want them from the ladybug. Fox wants all the chicken in the world, rabbit wants all the carrots, bear wants honey, donkey wants barley. Through the narration, the author makes the reader feel that all these requests are meaningless and impossible to make it happen. When the ladybug encounters a war-weary child and talks with him, the trajectory of the story changes. Different from all other animals, this child wishes nothing for himself. The child is sad because he/she lost his/her mother and other beloved people in war and is jealous the joy of the ladybug. The bug starts to feel something different after this conversation and the sentences at the beginning of the story become clear: “If we go to countryside when we feel bad, we see colourful things… and the different things which we see change us a little and we turn back to our old place as a changed.”[2] As it is clear from this quotation that the story is based on creating awareness. By giving place to the dissatisfaction and desiring all the honey and all the carrots in the world, the heaviness of a child witnessing the death of his/her mother during the war is emphasized. The author wants to remark children who still witness similar things and experiences the war. He creates this awareness based on the feeling of “nothing will ever be the same again” after facing the reality of war. The uncertainty and complication of the quoted sentence are obvious due to an often used word “thing”. Moreover, in consideration of the length of the book for an illustrated book and the level of seriousness of the topic make it hard to say that World’s Most Ladybug is suitable for preschool age. I would like to state that it is more reasonable to include less illustration in the book and make it a short novel for the third and fourth grade students.

The Romantic Fox is precious in regard to its topic which emphasizes the warm friendship of a violet and a fox. Even on the first page, the reader sees the fox puts the violet to sleep with tales and wakes him up saying “Happy mornings sir!”. Even when children, who walk around with joy, takes the violet to their home, they do not break up. The Fox comes to the window where violet stays in a cup of water and continues to tell him tales. As time passes by, tales of the fox becomes famous and the number of his audience increase. In this case, we should definitely talk about the beauty of the illustrations and how they complete the text. The illustrations belong to the Iranian artist Saeed Ensafi. Even though they are quite abstract for children, their originality and aesthetic value originate from this outstanding feature. The scene where children pluck the violet is quite valuable with its illustration and its message:

The reader does not only see the children and the violet here, there is a big field filled with flowers in the illustration. Within all this crowd, we see the uniqueness of the violet and the text reminds us the specialty and value of each particular flower. The message which is given to the reader and of course the children with the field filled with flowers is that “it doesn’t mean you can hurt or withhold an object just because there are plenty of them”. Because within all these crowd and similarities, the violet is actually one and unique. Furthermore, the existence of the fox in this picture indicates that there might be some lives and emotions (the crying of fox) that children can fail to notice. It is also a tiny warning for children readers to be careful about nature.

Another illustration, which I believe that it completes and deepens the text, is the one where the audience of the fox is illustrated.

In this scene, it is important to illustrate both animals and humans together as the audience of the fox. When the children reader, who sees the illustration and follows the story, see animals and humans listen to tales together, they no longer grow as people who separates and establish a superior-subordinate relationship but instead, they comprehend the beauty of living together and happy.

The Romantic Fox presents a warm friendship as the theme together with all its complementary illustrations but then destroys all the beauty with one move. This move is, of course, the final scene, where the fox grabs a chicken and runs away while telling tales to the violet… Why Mevlana İdris wants to give this message; “Even if a fox tells tales, act romanticly, after all, a fox is a fox and he eats chicken. This is the rule of nature.” is disputable. Of course, children should learn the balance and the process of nature with all its reality. If this is what we aim to tell, then we should build the whole book from this perspective. However, while Mevlana İdris does not point the “rules” of nature in any part of the book, he suddenly -and in the end- brings up this issue and this move conflicts with the warm friendship story. At this point, I believe it is possible to leave a positive impression on the child with an alternative end: While the fox tells his tales, he sees the sorrow in violet’s eyes. Yes, the violet might be happy, has her friend with herself, but she is separated from home, separated from old arceuthos drupacea. Even though she is happy, she cannot hide the sorrow in her eyes. Meanwhile, the fox can make a deal with his audiences in order to take his friend back to home: “Let’s release the violet and let’s go back to home. There, I will continue telling stories every night.” It is possible to reach a happy end like this… In this alternative finale, the fox does not betray the violet, chickens are not victims but only the audience. The fox saves his friend thanks to his talent and the power of literature. In this way, children in preschool age witness friendship, fidelity, and the beauty of literature.

Even though it has fantastic illustrations and interesting theme, just like The Romantic Fox, Flying Donkey also gives a negative message in the finale to the children readers. Moreover, the message of this story has a way more devastating effects. In Flying Monkey, the reader witnesses a donkey, which searches the meaning of life and achieve his dreams. First, I will talk about the complementariness of the illustrations. It is seen that the donkey that searches for the meaning of life crosses the mountains, hills and deserts. Meanwhile, the donkey is always illustrated as looking at the floor. When he realizes that the answer which he is looking for is flying, he looks at the sky. Illustrating the donkey first looking at the floor and then the sky gives the message that if you cannot find the answers, change your perspective!

The donkey who feels a deep desire for flying consults the birds. Eight hundred and eight birds -this number has no meaning in the text, it is chosen probably because of the rhyme and to catch the attention of children but it serves only a confusion- plucks one feather from themselves and makes a huge pair of wings for the donkey. Up until now, the message given to the child reader is valuable because it encourages to follow dreams. Each bird giving a feather is a meaningful example for “achieving together”. Yet, the donkey suddenly changes and starts kicking the birds and scaring the pilots. Manipulating the power or an opportunity and crossing the line is a common situation, and it is okay to be told to the children reader. However, we should not skip this detail that there is no sign at the beginning of the story that the donkey will manipulate his power. For example, the donkey could be represented as capricious, lively character and this could have been implied. The sudden and sharp turn of the donkey indicates that Mevlana İdris did not deliberately build the character.

At this point, where we are very close to the finale, the last thing pushes the limits of patience is when donkey bites the moon. In response, birds make a decision among themselves; the donkey should go back to the earth. This detail is very important here because it shows the reader why the finale is contradictory that birds say “we made a mistake, an animal of the earth should have stayed on earth” to get the donkey off the sky. They cannot bring him down by themselves because it is impossible to reach the donkey. Then, they make wings for a horse and sent him to catch the donkey. When they come down together, they remove the donkey’s wings but let horse keep them as an award.

Flying Donkey’s aforementioned finale is unfavourable from two points. First, it advises not a solution but punishment to the reader. In this case, an alternative finale should definitely be a civilized solution based on talking and telling their disturbance to the donkey. Bringing donkey down with force and removing his wings advises only punishment to the children reader, and a child who grows up reading this may have a devastating effect on the world. The second unfavourable point of this text is the confliction in the text. Birds want to bring the donkey down by saying “an animal of the earth should stay on earth” but they allow the horse to keep the wings. Also, the horse didn’t do any action to deserve those wings. The only reason why he catches the donkey is that he is a big animal like the donkey and it comes from his nature, he does not make any sacrifice or effort. Giving unjust awards and punishing a bad behaviour without communication are mistakes which have devastating pedagogic effects. It is not acceptable to allow it in a children’s book.

The warm relationship between a violet and a fox and a donkey’s achievement of his dream of flying are themes that will leave positive effects on children. Therefore, The Romantic Fox and Flying Donkey is very valuable. Mevlana İdris, other than the use of a few slang words, enriches his story with a poetic language. Nevertheless, both of these books have some problems to be accepted and they prevent reading them comfortably and advising them other people: the finales. They destroy all the beauty which is built throughout the text with one move and the reader gets a negative influence. It was undue that the fox leaves the violet and ran after the chicken. Likewise, the punishment of a mischievous spoiled donkey without any communication and awarding a character for no reason is unfavourable from a pedagogic perspective. It is not possible to have a message in a children’s book that will advise the reader to punish. Therefore, I believe that both of these books can only be read to a child for the sake of its illustrations and warm themes, only if finales are changed.

Bibliography

Zengin, Mevlâna İdris. Dünyanın En Uğurböceği. İstanbul: Kipat Yayınları, 2009.

Zengin, Mevlâna İdris. Romantik Tilki. İstanbul: Kipat Yayınları, 2009.

Zengin, Mevlâna İdris. Uçan Eşek. İstanbul: Kipat Yayınları, 2009.