Age: Intermediate
Genre: Folklore
Media: Colored Pencil
Review/Critique : This Armenian girl is fighting with her brothers, falls asleep, has a dream about the marketplace, and wakes up ready to make things right. I found this book in the folklore section, but I am not familiar with it enough to know if this is a story that was passed down through time. I do know that it is a realistic fiction because while the story is made up, nothing impossible occurs during the story. ( )

When Anayida quarrels with her two brothers over the lunch table, her mother advises her not to let "trifles spoil her day," but the young Armenian girl stubbornly refuses to relent. Sulking at the table, she falls asleep, dreaming of a trip to the market, for the ingredients to make baklava. When a single drop of honey attracts a bee, and the bee a cat, the chain of events set in motion lead to disaster - a lesson Anayida takes to heart, when she wakes up...

I was curious, while reading A Drop of Honey, whether the framing story of Anayida was part of the folktale, or just the dream sequence at the market, information not available anywhere in the book. In either case, this a fairly engaging story, although I didn't think it the equal of Bider's other folkloric retelling, The Buried Treasure. The soft, pastel illustrations by Armen Kojoyian are appealing, although his faces were a little too blurry for my taste. All in all, a book I would recommend primarily to readers with a strong interest in Armenian folklore and children's literature. ( )

A drop of honey leads to disaster, allowing a girl to learn the lesson "Don't make a mountain out of a molehill". ( )