Scheherazade tells her tales. Sometimes she tells of other people telling the tale. So a story within a story.
There are interludes between the story where author discusses the historical background of items, thoughts, traditions brought up in the stories. ( )

I feel like the stories encompassed under the title of The Arabian Nights are stories people know only the basics of due to popular culture such as movies, tv shows, etc. I feel like this book - although it’s directed toward children - is a great way to get introduced to many of these stories. Also, the art along with the stories is amazingly done. ( )

Donna Jo Napoli and Christina Balit, the author/illustrator team behind such titles as Treasury of Greek Mythology, Treasury of Egyptian Mythology and Treasury of Norse Mythology, all also published by National Geographic, turn in this title to the Arabian Nights - that fabulous collection of Middle Eastern stories also sometimes known as the 1001 Nights. Napoli maintains the framing story of Scheherazade in her retelling, exploring how this inventive young storyteller must use her gift in order to prolong and save her own life, bringing healing to her husband, a man embittered by his first wife's betrayal, who had vowed to execute each new wife after a single night of wedlock, so that none could prove unfaithful to him. Although her narrator is meant to tell 1001 stories, over the course of 1001 nights, Napoli chooses a selection of the tales contained in the original for inclusion here, from favorites such as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the many voyages of Sindbad the Sailor and Aladdin, to other selections, such as the tales of Maaruf the Cobbler, that of Qamar Al-Zaman, or that of King Yunan and Sage Duban. The after matter includes a discussion of Napoli's adaptation strategy, her source material, a map of the Middle East, and an index...

Although I have read a number of retellings of specific stories from the Arabian Nights, particularly Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin (mentioned above), I have never read the story collection in its entirety, nor have I read a great many anthologies taken from that collection, making Tales from the Arabian Nights: Stories of Adventure, Magic, Love, and Betrayal a pleasure. Some of Napoli's other books in this vein have been marred by her tendency as a narrator to moralize, something I have found intrusive. Here however, this tendency is subsumed by the narrator Scheherazade, whose criticisms feel entirely appropriate, given her precarious situation. The tales themselves were engaging, and I appreciated the way in which various levels of story - the framing story of Scheherazade, the stories told by Scheherazade, the stories told by characters within the stories being told, and so on - were all intertwined in one complicated but satisfying whole. As usual, I found Christina Balit's accompanying illustrations absolutely gorgeous - her artwork is in fact the reason that I tracked down these Napoli collections in the first place. Recommended to readers looking for an anthology of stories from the Arabian Nights adapted for children - middle grades and above, I would say - and to fellow fans of Balit's work. ( )

This is one of the best collections of the Arabian Nights stories for children that I have found. I like that the links between the stories are preserved and there are informative sidebars that explain a detail about Middle Easter/Islamic culture that is relevant to the story. I would like a little bit more about the stories in the end notes. National Geographic has a series of most major world folklores. ( )

This book is filled with folk tales from the middle east and Asia that are filled with culture.