The Hat Seller

In this quick, easy-to-read folktale originating from Nepal, a hat seller decides to rest beneath a tree after a long day of travel. However, when a group of curious monkeys in the tree above see him asleep, they climb down to get a closer look into the bag of hats lying beside him. When they find the multicolored, perfectly fitting hats, they dance and sing, that is, until the hat seller awakens. What is the hat seller to do when all the hats he needs to sell are on the monkeys’ heads? Thoughtfully written by Ananta Prasad Wagle, known to be a veteran writer of children’s fiction in Nepal, colorfully illustrated by Promina Shreshtha, and nearly perfectly translated by Levin Leo, who was only 12 years-old at the time, this Nepalese folk tale is the most appropriate for early grade readers or those in Level 2 on the Storyweaver scale. Storyweaver, an open-access, multilingual repository of high-quality storybooks sourced from global publishers and translated by crowdsourcing, is what makes this folktale accessible for all. It can be downloaded for offline reading and read in English, Nepali, Urdu, French, Hindi, and Tamil.  

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