Storytelling for Week 2: Cat and Fox Diaries

Dear Diary,

            Mr. Fox is one of my best friends even though he can be a bit much to handle at times. He can be really uppity and boastful.  We get along really well, but some days I just can’t handle him and would rather he just not bother me.  Today, he was being especially annoying.  Like, more annoying than usual, which is really hard to believe.  I was taking my regular midday nap in the sun, when he came over and started poking me, and yelling at me to wake up.  He even stepped on my tail! Ugh.  He woke me up for the most pointless reason too.  He ran all the way over just to tell me he learned a bunch of new tricks for escaping from his enemies and predators.  Like I care.  I only have one way of escaping that always works for me, and that’s all I need.  Why would you want so many options?  Whatever.  Then, out of no where, some dogs came.  I quickly climbed up the tree and hid high within the branches.  Mr. Fox was clearly having a hard time choosing which one of his tricks he would use as his escape method because the dogs found him.  They almost killed him too! Luckily for Mr. Fox, he only lost his tail.  Maybe now he’ll stick to one method that he knows really well.  And then maybe one day he'll finally learn to not bother me when I'm asleep; that'll be the day. 

-       Cat

Dear Diary,

            Today completely sucked and I am so glad it is finally over.  I can honestly say it was one of the worst days of my life.  I have been learning new tricks for escaping from my enemies and have spent countless hours practicing them.  Today, I finally perfected them.  I went over to Cat’s house to tell her all about it because I was so excited.  She's so good at everything, so I thought she would be happy that I found something I was good at.  When I got there, she was asleep, as per usual.  Does she do anything else?  Good grief.  So, I woke her up to tell her the exciting news.  She could not have been less interested.  She was so angry at me for bothering her during what was probably her tenth nap that day that she wasn’t even slightly happy for me.  I worked really hard learning these tricks!  I was trying to show her some of them when a bunch of dogs started running towards us.  I was so flustered that I couldn’t decide which trick I wanted to use.  By the time the dogs got there, it was too late for me to decide; they chased me until I found a hole to crawl into, but they bit off my tail!  Cat didn’t even try and help me!  I spent the rest of the afternoon in the emergency room getting stitches.  To make matters worse, I now have to sit on a donut for the next couple of weeks.  What am I going to do about my tail?

            - Mr. Fox

From Aesop's Illustrated by Milo Winter The Fox and the Cat

Author's Note: Aesop (Jacobs) >>> Dogs and Cats >>> The Fox and the Cat 

I thought I would try something different and write this story in diary form.  I've never written anything in this style, so it was a nice change.  In the original story, the fox is killed by the dogs because he could not decide what escape plan to use, and by the time he did choose it was much too late.  Since I wanted to write in diary form, I thought it was necessary to write a diary entry from both the cat and the fox's perspective to better tell the story.  Other than changing the ending, I think I kept to the story pretty well.  I think I kept the moral of the original story the same in mine as well, except that the fox in my story actually gets to learn from his lessons.  It was really fun writing a fable in this way since most of them are really short so this helped to expand.
This image is the one used in the Aesop (Winter) book.  The one used in the Aesop (Jacobs) book isn't as nice in my opinion and it's kind of busy because it tells another story in the image.  Plus, I really like Milo Winter's illustrations. 

Bibliography: Bibliography: The Fables of Aesop by Joseph Jacobs (1894)

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

Reading Diary Week 2: Cupid and Psyche

Cupid & Psyche

First half:

I know this story is supposed to be sort of like Beauty and the Beast, but it actually kind of reminds me of Cinderella (Brothers Grimm version).  The two sisters, who are not as pretty as Psyche, are jealous of her marriage.  The sisters remind me of the evil step-sisters, but I think it's worse that they're actually related and plot to ruin her marriage and almost convince Psyche to kill her husband.

                                                           Psyche Abandoned, by Coype mythfolklore.blogspot

Second half:

This story is very similar to Cinderella and the story of Pandora (Wikipedia).  I think that not only is the bottle of beauty similar to Pandora's box, but also Psyche discovering, before she was supposed to, that her husband is Cupid.
I can definitely see the similarities of Cupid and Psyche and Beauty and the Beast, except I kind of thought of the kidnapped girl to be the Beauty and Lucius to be the Beast.  Although, I understand that Psyche is the beauty and Cupid is the Beast.  After finishing the story, the earlier parts when Cupid is telling Psyche to not tell her sister's that she doesn't know what he looks like kind of reminds me of the part in the Disney movie when the Beast is telling Belle not to go to the west wing.  I know those are not the same thing at all, but it just kind of reminded me of it.

                                                                              Psyche, by Waterhouse