The Ring Dove and Her Friends a personalized book with your child as the hero

This is one of the oldest animal tales in the Arabic language. It comes from Kalila and Dimna, the famous book of fables that Ibn al-Muqaffa wrote more than twelve hundred years ago, and it tells how a few small, weak creatures became stronger than any hunter, simply by being true friends.

In a green oasis, between the golden dunes and the rocky hills, there stood a great shady tree. In its branches lived a crow, who liked to sit high up and watch everything that happened below.

One morning the crow saw a hunter come walking across the sand with a net over his shoulder. The hunter spread the net out flat, scattered a handful of grain on top of it, and hid behind a bush to wait.

Before long a flock of doves came flying over the oasis. At their head flew the ring dove, a soft grey dove with a black ring round her neck, who was the wisest of them all and the queen of her flock. The doves saw the grain shining in the sun, and down they all swooped to eat it, and the net fell over them.

The doves flapped and fluttered and pulled in every direction, and the net only held them tighter. The hunter came running.

"Stop!" called the ring dove. "If each of us struggles alone, we will all be caught. But if we fly together, all at once, we can carry the net away. Ready? Now!"

All together the doves beat their wings, and slowly, slowly, the whole net rose off the sand and up into the sky, with every dove still inside it. The hunter ran after them as fast as he could, but they flew over the hills, and at last he gave up and sat down in the sand to catch his breath.

The crow was amazed. "I must see how this ends," he said, and he flew after the doves.

The ring dove led her flock to a pile of rocks where a little burrow opened in the ground. "Zirak!" she called. "Zirak, my friend, come out!"

Out of the burrow peeped a small brown rat with round ears and bright eyes. It was Zirak, the ring dove's oldest friend. When he saw her caught in the net, he hurried to her and began to gnaw the cord around her neck.

"No," said the ring dove. "First free my friends, one by one, and free me last. If you grow tired after freeing me, you might leave one of them behind. But you would never leave me."

So Zirak gnawed the cords of every dove, one after another, and last of all the ring dove's, and the whole flock flew away home, free and happy.

The crow had watched it all from a rock nearby. "Zirak," he said, "I would like to be your friend."

"You?" said the rat, backing into his burrow. "Crows eat rats! How could we be friends?"

"If I ate you," said the crow, "I would have one meal. If I have you as a friend, I will have a friend for life. And I have just seen what a good friend you are." The rat thought about it, and came out, and from that day the crow and the rat were friends.

Later the crow carried Zirak to a pond fed by a spring, among the date palms, where his friend the tortoise lived. The tortoise was slow and wise and very kind, and the three of them sat by the water and talked for hours. One day a gazelle came running out of the desert, frightened by a hunter, and the friends welcomed her and calmed her, and she stayed. Now there were four friends: the crow, the rat, the tortoise and the gazelle.

But one day the hunter came back, and he found the tortoise walking slowly by the pond. He picked her up, put her in his sack, tied it tight and set off home.

The friends were in despair, until the rat had an idea. "Gazelle," he said, "run out in front of the hunter and pretend to be hurt. Limp, and stumble, and let him follow you. Crow, fly over her as if she is about to fall. When the hunter drops the sack to chase you, I will set the tortoise free."

So the gazelle limped across the sand, and the crow circled above her, and the hunter thought, "A gazelle is a bigger prize than a tortoise!" He dropped the sack and ran after her. At once Zirak gnawed through the cord, and the tortoise crawled out and hid among the reeds. And the gazelle, as soon as the hunter came near, bounded away as fast as the wind.

When the hunter came back to his sack, it was empty, with a little hole in the cord. He scratched his head, looked all around, and walked home with nothing at all.

And the four friends, the crow, the rat, the tortoise and the gazelle, lived together by the pond in the oasis, safe and happy, because they had learned what the ring dove knew: alone, the small and the weak are easily caught, but together they are stronger than any net.