The Boy and the Kestrel

Sam visits the edge of a wide, sunny meadow after school each day, settling on a flat stone in his mustard yellow jumper with a red canvas satchel of sketchbooks and pencils beside him. There he waits for a small falcon with a rusty brown back, pale cream breast and slate grey head, watching it hover above the grass in search of voles. Through these quiet visits, Sam comes to understand that patience is what allows him to observe the bird at all, and on days when the kestrel stays away he listens to the wind and notices the beetles, butterflies and swaying grass instead.

Page by page, Sam's sketchbook fills with the hovering kestrel, the open grassland, a fence post and the wide blue sky. When his teacher with the round glasses finds the drawings, she asks him to present them to the class, where he explains how the kestrel hunts and how far its sharp eyes can see. Written by Aysel Banu YAVUZAL, this gentle tale can be read on Masal İzle and follows Sam as his classmates' questions grow into a conversation about wild meadows and the creatures that depend on them.