Other than Shahrzad 's name, there are few clues for readers unfamiliar with the original, but one of them may send some to the source: "One thousand and one nights passed. Through daily doses of storytelling, each one building on the last, she is able to make the king become kind, with her last story telling him of himself, the grief for his late wife that has made him mean, and his reform. When she hears about an angry king who creates cruel laws, she steps in. In a modern setting, Shahrzad, with fuzzy black cropped hair and caterpillar-like black eyebrows against pale skin, listens for stories everywhere and then recounts them to others. Gr 3-5-Kazemi's version of the legendary tale of Sheherazade starts with a girl who loves stories. We live or die by the stories we tell and how we see, frame, and word the world.īrought to life by Iranian artist Nahid Kazemi, this bold heroine reminds us of how powerfully intertwined reality is with the stories we tell. We live and die by the sword? Not exactly, says Shahrzad. Like Scheherazade, she tells the king story after story, but this time not to save her own life, but those of the king's people and his own.īecause Shahrzad knows the power of the creative imagination and that the stories we tell and the words we use shape our very existence. Shahrzad can't forget the boy and his story, and so, when she sees a toy airplane in a store, she imagines herself zooming off to the boy's home country, where she confronts the king, to make him reflect on the kind of leader he really wants to be. When she meets a boy and asks him to tell her his story, he recounts fleeing a country that was peaceful and happy, until its grieving king grew angry and cruel. Shahrzad loves stories and looks for them everywhere. Shahrzad and the Angry King is a contemporary reimagining of the Scheherazade tale, starring scooter-riding, story-loving Shahrzad. A rebel dreamer of a girl daydreams about her role in making the world a better place-and since dreams bleed into reality, maybe she really does.