Week 13 Essay: Grimm But Not Grim

I read the LibriVox Brothers Grimm unit this week and I really enjoyed reading all of the different stories.   I was surprised that they all had fairly happy endings.  I'm used to most of the stories, especially the ones that Disney uses, to end rather tragically and not so happily as most of these stories did.  These definitely seem to be more kid friendly than some of the other ones that we've read in past units.  I don't think some of the past stories would be good for bedtime haha.  I also really liked that most of the stories focused more on mercy rather than justice.  There were some deaths but for the most part it was a different punishment - either having to marry someone they didn't want to or giving their child to an enchantress.  I definitely needed some happy endings this week!
I was pretty surprised by the ending of The Twelve Dancing Princesses .  The king doesn't understand how his daughters' shoes have holes in them every morning when they are locked in their room at night.  He has princes try to find out and if they fail after three nights, they are beheaded.  He even beheaded his own son!  He promises that whoever finds out will be king when he dies.  The old soldier finds out and then he picks what daughter he wants to marry and then he becomes king.  It was just so random to me.  Especially since so many princes were beheaded and the only punishment his daughters get is that one of them has to marry the soldier.  It's not much of a punishment compared to getting beheaded.  I was a little sad for the underground princes though.  I wonder what the soldier did to the trap door and if the other sisters were able to see their princes.

                                                       Image source: wikipedia

                                                 Illustration by R. Anning Bell

Essay Week 12: English Fairy Tales

This week I read the Joseph Jacob's English Fairy Tales  unit.  I really liked that they were all unfamiliar stories, besides the Three Little Pigs.  Although, this version of the Three Little Pigs was different then the one we all know.  In the "nicer" version, the first two pigs - the ones that live in the house of straw and the house of twigs - live and run the house made of bricks.  In the English Fairy Tale version, the first two pigs are unable to escape from the big bad wolf and actually get eaten.  I almost didn't read that story because I thought it was going to be the one I was so familiar with and I was definitely wrong.
All of these stories were short and easy to read.  Some of them though were really cutesy and rhymed or added a -y suffix which kind of made it difficult to read.  It made me feel tongue-tied a few times.  The story of Henny-Penny  was very easy to get tongue-tied while reading because of all the character's silly names and the way the story accumulates.  I really enjoy reading accumulation stories because I like how everything slowly builds on top of each other and then quickly dissolves at the end.  The ending is also usually interesting since you don't really know what to expect since everything is just building and building.  I also liked the story of the Fairy Ointment .  Fairies are very secretive creatures and people seem to dislike them, which I don't really understand why.  I was confused as to why the baby would need ointment if he were a fairy.  What does the ointment do for the fairies as opposed to humans?

                                                                  Image source: mythfolklore.blogspot.com
                                                                           The cover of the book. 

Bibliography: English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1890)

Essay Week 11: The Welsh Fairy Book

This week I read the Welsh Tales with illustrations by Thomas unit.  I had read some of the other stories in high school so I thought it would be interesting to read something I haven't before.  I really liked this unit.  The stories were easy to read and understand.  The only difficult part was trying to figure out how to pronounce some of the names of people or places.  I guess I didn't realize how difficult Welsh is and assumed that it would all be translated to English or that the names would be changed.  The pronunciation guide was very helpful.  I think if it had audio so you could hear how to pronounce things would be even better.
I read Why the Red Dragon is the Emblem of Wales .  I was hoping for it to be really exciting and maybe some dragon slaying since I thought about doing a storybook on dragons, but this was actually about two serpents that represent dragons.  It was still a good story regardless, I just had my hopes up.  I think my favorite story was Owen Goes a-Wooing .  It was cute and I really like the idea of time displacement.  It's interesting to think that what seemed to be only a few hours under water for Owen was actually a month for his girlfriend Siwsi who was on land.  I'm really glad I read this section rather than reading Beowulf or the English Aesop stories again.  I remember learning about King Arthur in high school but I don't recall any of these stories so it was nice to read something different but also kind of familiar.

                                                 Image source: mythfolklore.blogspot.com
                                                                 The cover of the book.

Week 9 Essay: Tejas Legends

I went to a high school that was once part of an Indian Reservation and took Native American History.  I hated it.  I was really not looking forward to this unit since I thought it was going to be the same thing but I actually really liked this unit.  The stories were much better than the one we read in high school.  I think we mainly focused on one tribe and one trickster for the year so I was tired of hearing all about him.  I liked that the Tejas Legends were all different and not about the same person over and over again.

These were all pretty sure and very easy to read.  I liked that the stories for the most part were creation stories.  It makes it more interesting to read I think.  I like reading different cultures' creation stories because they are all so different and unique.  I think that is what I was mostly expecting from this class overall.

My favorite stories this week were "The Maiden Who Loved a Star," "Why Irises Hold Hands," "The Cloud That Was Lost," and "The Plant That Grows in Trees."  In past units, I felt like a lot of the characters would do things selfishly or as a trick.  In "The Plant That Grows in Trees" I was surprised the bird was actually trying to look out for the plant and not put it in the tree for selfish reasons.  Same with "The Maiden Who Loved a Star."  I was surprised the witch didn't kill the young girl when she asked her too but gave her an alternate option that would keep her alive but just not in human form.

Overall, I really enjoyed the readings for this unit and am excited to see what the next unit will be like.

                                                        Image source: Un-textbook

Essay Week 6: Chinese Irony Tales

I really enjoyed reading the stories of the Chinese Fairy Tales unit this week.  The stories are definitely not what one would expect from fairy tales.  I know not everything is Disney-esque, but there is always a part of me that expects there to be a happy ending, or at least one that is not so sudden and ironic.

One of my favorite stories was The Favorite of Fortune and the Child of Ill Luck.  The female character really does have the worst luck ever.  She picks the beggar out of the crowd of princes and other good suitors to be her husband because she can see he has good luck.  Not long after getting married, the beggar husband decides he needs to go find his fortune.  He is gone for eighteen years and she almost starves to death.  He finally returns as an emperor and makes her empresses.  Eighteen days later, she dies. The story ends, "But her husband lived for many a long year." After reading the story and hoping that her luck has actually changed, this ending is really surprising.  It's so surprising it's funny because you expect there to be more but there isn't.

I also liked The Maiden Who Was Stolen Away for this reason.  The ending is sudden, but it's not as surprising.  One thing I am curious about is what happened to the ogre after the maiden's brother threw his ax at him and hit him the arm?  Did he sulk in the mountains? Or did he die?

                                                                  Image info: mythfolklore.blogspot.com

I think the information provided at the beginning of this unit in the overview was plenty.  I really enjoyed the Persian Fairy Tales from last week so I was fairly certain I would like these as well.  I was these kinds of stories when I signed up for this class, but I really like reading them!

Essay for Week 3: Fable Folks

This week I read Aesop's fables that were illustrated by Milo Winter.  Aesop's fables are what I was really expecting to read and learn the most about when I was signing up for this class.  I also like the structure of it.  Rather than one long story, it's several short stories, and that helps me a lot.  I think that helps me with the storytelling assignments because there are several options for stories to tell and ways to tell them.
One of my favorite stories was The Spendthrift and the Swallow.  It's about a guy who sees a swallow on a nice day in early spring thinks that winter is finally over.  He sells all of his winter clothes to fully embrace the nice weather.  Then, a few days later, the cold weather came back and brought a severe frost along with it.  That is exactly what spring is like in Oklahoma.  Another reason I like this story is because of the illustration.  I think we've all seen this person walking around campus on a nice sunny day in February.

Another one of my favorite stories is The Astrologer.  This man claims to be able to see the future.  One night he is looking up at the stars while walking and falls into a hole.  Moral of the story being to take care of the little stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself.  I think being in school makes you dwell on the big picture too much that you don't take as much care of the little stuff.  I think we focus on what we want to do after college and not so much as the steps to take to get there.  Or, some people focus so much on school that they forget to make friends, which is also important.

Overall, I really liked this unit as a whole!

Essay for Week 2: Fairy Tales and Greek Mythology

I really enjoyed reading the story of Cupid and Psyche.  There were times when I found it difficult to fully understand what was happening, but the notes really helped.  The notes were really helpful.  If there weren’t any notes, I would have thought that the Beauty was the girl that was kidnapped and that the Beast was Lucius.  I still think it applies to them, especially since Lucius was turned into a donkey and the girl was a prisoner. 

I would’ve liked to know beforehand why the girl was kidnapped on the day of her wedding and why Lucius was turned into a donkey.  If I were the girl and just kidnapped before my wedding, the last thing I would want to hear would be a fairy tale told by some old woman that helped kidnap me. 

I also read some more of Aesop's Fables (Jacobs) and really enjoyed those as well.  I really like reading fables; they’re short and to the point, and the moral is always very clear.  Even though it’s not just one story, but several, I really like how it’s broken up.  It makes me feel like the reading isn’t as long, which works better for my ADD brain.  The notes at the beginning were helpful as well because it set up what each section was about.  One thing I was confused about is the part that was in parenthesis.  The story would say something like, Crane 49.  The Cat and Venus (Perry 50).  What does Perry 50 mean?  I didn’t see anything in the notes.  It’s not something that bothered me or anything like that, I was just curious. 

Overall, I would say these two sections were what I was expecting from this class.  I really like this unit so far, and I’m excited to read more. 

                                                                       Psyche Transported, by Giordano