PRESERVING AN ENDANGERED CULTURE: LUCINE KASBARIAN AND THE GREEDY SPARROW
By lynmillerlachmann

May 16, 2011

Last month Armenians throughout the United States and the world
commemorated the 1915 genocide as part of Genocide Awareness
and Prevention Month. To coincide with this remembrance, Marshall
Cavendish published Lucine Kasbarian’s adapted folktale from Armenia,
The Greedy Sparrow. While this picture book does not address the issue
of genocide for young readers (in contrast to two excellent picture
books from 2010-Meg Wiviott’s Benno and the Night of Broken Glass,
set in 1938 in Nazi Germany, and Icy Smith’s Half Spoon of Rice,
set in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge terror), it preserves and
extends a culture that the Turkish authorities sought to eradicate.

Kasbarian adapts a traditional Armenian tale about a sparrow that
wishes to become a minstrel. On his way to his goal, the sparrow
asks a baker woman to pull a thorn from his foot. When he asks for
the thorn to be returned to him and the woman tells him she threw it
into the fire, he demands a loaf of bread. Using that loaf of bread, he
“trades up” to get a sheep, a bride at a wedding, and finally the lute
that will make him a minstrel. In his rapture, however, the bird falls
out of the tree, loses the lute, and gets another thorn in his foot.

Kasbarian takes on greed and its consequences in a subtle and nuanced
way, as some may interpret his trade of the bride for the lute to be
“trading down,” especially since the author doesn’t reveal his hidden
artistic desire until the very end. Furthermore, many of the people he
tricks are themselves culpable-not the baker, but the shepherd who eats
the bread the sparrow left with him for safekeeping, and the sheep left
for safekeeping with the wedding party that ends up turned into shish
kebab. The illustrations add much to this tale, including a level
of complexity as the bride rides off on horseback with the sparrow
hitching a ride on her head. The stupid-looking sheep that exhibits
little awareness of his fate adds much humor to this rendition.

I interviewed Kasbarian about the inspiration for The Greedy Sparrow
and some of the themes of the book.

You describe The Greedy Sparrow as based on an Armenian folktale. How
did you change the tale to make the picture book, and why?

This tale was passed down orally in my family from my great-grandmother
to my father to me-in the endangered Armenian dialect of Dikranagerd
(present-day Diyarbakir, Turkey). The tale has been in the Armenian
oral tradition for centuries. It was first put to paper by Armenian
poet Hovhannes Toumanian at the turn of the 20th century.

The picture book contains the same message as the folktale itself-a
cunning bird goes about improving his lot in life by swindling
well-meaning people. The version I chose has a slightly different
ending than the oral version passed down to me-though both versions
have been told by Armenians-because it more clearly conveyed that
manipulation and dishonesty have their consequences.

And unlike the tale’s oral version, the picture book incorporates
native Armenian landmarks into the story to introduce readers to the
Armenian landscape and patrimony, something that had not traditionally
been necessary, of course, for Armenian listeners. For example,
the sparrow flies over Mount Ararat, the symbol of Armenia to all
Armenians and the resting place of Noah’s Ark. And the wedding takes
place at the Holy Cross Cathedral on the island of Aghtamar, a place
of great significance to Armenians. Introducing native lands and
landmarks were important for me, and gives the reader true historical
and geographical context.

Dispossessed peoples have strong ties to their lands, of course. The
Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek people still await restorative justice
for the unpunished crime of genocide, and this includes the return
of their native lands.

While the sparrow punishes the baker’s good deed by taking her
bread, none of the other characters-the shepherd, the groom, or the
musician-is entirely innocent. Why did you choose to incorporate this
moral ambiguity into the story?

Well, the story was passed down to me this way, so I cannot take credit
for the ambiguity. I will say that all of the human characters start
out innocently enough, but are duped by the sparrow who knows the
vulnerabilities of human nature. The moral ambiguities add to the
tale’s depth. Most readers feel that the wily sparrow’s downfall
demonstrates the triumph of honesty over cheating. Other readers
appreciate the message that unreservedly trusting a stranger-in this
case, the sparrow-can be unwise. Both perceptions are legitimate. To
help children and adults discuss the implications for everyday
behavior, I created an activity guide for the book, located at:

How have you incorporated your family’s experience as survivors of
the Armenian genocide into a picture book for young children?

Witnessing the abduction and forced assimilation of women and children,
and undergoing near-annihilation and exile as a result of a planned
genocide, my surviving family members felt the real possibility that
the Armenian people could one day become extinct. Out of this grew
a profound desire to practice and preserve as much of our culture as
we could-songs, dances, cuisine, crafts, stories, and more.

While her infant children perished in the death marches, my paternal
grandmother managed to smuggle out the deeds belonging to our family’s
confiscated property. That was the extent of the material family
heirlooms that made it to America.

Thus, non-material treasures, such as what was carried in their
memory, become precious links to our identity, cultural traditions
and past. “The Greedy Sparrow” tale was one of these treasures.

Being able to work with the incredibly talented illustrator Maria
Zaikina offered us the chance to visually recreate Armenian village
life prior to the genocide and to celebrate the cultural traditions
practiced there.

The Greedy Sparrow was released this April, which is Armenian genocide
memorial month. It’s my hope that the tale will be a small contribution
towards the idea that, in spite of genocide, a culture survives. Just
as the sparrow himself bullied his way into possessing things that
didn’t belong to him, Turkish invaders seized land, women, and cultural
practices from the native Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks.

Just as the world must press for restorative justice for this
unpunished crime against humanity, we can also hope that the same
karma that caught up with the sparrow catches up with today’s Turkish
government-which is the direct inheritor of the perpetrating regime and
which denies yet continues to benefit from the fruits of that crime.