Reading Notes: Grimm (LibriVox) Part B

In the second part of this unit's readings, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the twelve huntsmen. In this story there lived a prince and his father, the king. The prince was happily married to a bride when he caught news of his fathers illness. He told the bride that when he was named king he would come back to her and left on horseback. When the prince arrived at the palace, the king was near death and his last dying wish was for the prince to marry a handpicked maiden. Not knowing what he was saying, the prince agreed and the father died. The prince, now named king, married to a new queen. The true bride caught news of this and ordered her father to bring her maidens that looked like her and eleven of them. He found them all around and brought them to the true bride to be clothed like a huntsmen. They were then sent away to the king whom accepted them with open arms. The king had a lion, however, and this lion warned the king that these were not men, but instead women. The king put them to the test multiple times including having them walk on peas and look at spinning-wheels. The huntsmen had an ally on their side who was a servant of the king. He informed them of these challenged and thus they all passed. One day the king was informed that his queen would be arriving shortly. This made the true bride faint and fall to the ground. The king went to her and took off her gloves. Then he realized that this was his former bride who he married before his father died. When she woke, he told her that she was the only one he loved and informed the queen that she was no longer needed. In my story I would take it a bit further and have the ex-queen become jealous and exact her revenge of the kingdom in some form or another.

Grimm (LibriVox) by Brothers Grimm, link to online reading

(The King and his Lion, Source: Twelve Huntsmen)

Reading Notes: Grimm (LibriVox) Part A

For this unit I decided that the story "The Frog Prince" was the best suited for me if I decided to retell it in my own words. The story goes that a princess goes out one night with her toy ball and is continuously throwing it into the sky. She throws it higher and higher until suddenly she throws it so high that when it comes down, it bounces into a spring. She cried and weeps and even says that she'd give away all her belongings just to get the ball back. Upon hearing this a frog emerged from the spring and told her that he would get the ball for her if she let him sit next to her, eat off her plate, and sleep on her bed. The arrogant princess she is, said yes, but once the frog retrieved her ball she sprinted back to her castle in joy and forgot about the frog. The next morning the frog appeared at her door, but she freaked out and worried her parents. She told her parents about the night before and they told her that she must respect her promises, so she let the frog hop on her chair and sit next to her. She let him eat off her plate until he was full and once that happened she took him up to her bed to sleep. The same thing happened the next day and the next day. However, on the final day the frog turned into a handsome prince and asked for her hand in marriage. She agreed and they lived happily ever after. This reminds me a lot of the Disney movie "The Princess and the Frog". In my own version I would make the frog's three things to break the witches curse be something more interesting instead of just sitting, eating, and sleeping for three straight days.

Grimm (LibriVox) by Brothers Grimm, link to online reading

(The Princess and the Frog, Source: Richard Crouse)

Tech Tip: Canvas Mobile App

I used to have the older version of the Canvas app on my iPhone, but it lacked a lot of features so I got rid of it. However, they revamped the Canvas app and now I have it re-downloaded. It has so many more features now that it almost mimics the actual Canvas website. It does have some limitations though such as not being able to see class averages on assignments and tests. Another downside it you can't manually input in a "fake" score on one of your assignments just like you can on the actual Canvas, so that you can see what you need to make on the assignment to make a certain grade. Overall it is an amazing new app and I use it almost every day.

Reading Notes (Extra Credit): English Fairy Tales Part A

In this weeks extra credit reading, I decided to go ahead and read the unit on English Fairy Tales. The great thing is that a lot of these stories I grew listening to and reading about, so I have a lot of background knowledge on them. One in particular was "The Story of the Three Little Pigs" and how the wolf tried to blow down all the houses, but couldn't blow the brick house down. In Joseph Jacobs version it goes on a little bit further and tells the tale of how the wolf cunningly tried to get the pig to go outside the house so he could eat them. If i retold this story I would make the pigs the bad guys and the wolf the victim. Another story was "The Old Woman and Her Pig" which mimicked the familiar story of "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly". It was told as a nursery rhyme. In "Cap o' Rushes", there is a girl who is thrown out of her home for doing something small. She covers herself in mud and other nasty stuff and goes on to find herself a new home. There are three dances that are thrown, but the girl doesn't want to go and instead stays home. Eventually she gets ready for the final dance and ends up meeting her master's son. He finds out her true identity and they live happily ever after. It sounds a lot like a Disney tale to me. 

English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, link to online reading

(Three Little Pigs, Source: Gathering Books)

Reading Notes: Canterbury Tales Part A

After reading Part A of the collection of stories known as the "Canterbury Tales," I grew to like the Pardoner's Tale the most. In olden times the person with the title of "pardoner" was a part of the church who would go around the countryside and sell pardons that would forgive the sins of the buyer. These pardons were signed by the bishop himself. In my opinion these pardons sound like they were fake and only were sold to make money for the church or even for the individual themselves. The pardoner in this tales starts off by mentioning a group of three troublesome and rebellious boys. All they cared about was drinking and having fun with no care whatsoever in the world. They did give back to their society or care about anyone in it. One day the group of boys eavesdrop into a conversation about Death and how he keeps killing the people of their village. The tavern keeper also drops the fact that Death lives in the village next door. This makes Death an actual figure and not a figure of speech. Much like my project where Death is personified and is a person, it seems like the same is being done in this tale as well. The group of kids come to the decision that they will take on the task and vanquish Death himself. On their journey to the next village they stumbled upon an elderly man, but knowing the arrogance of the kids they start to make fun of him. Now for some reason the thought that the man might be a spy for Death came across them and they started to intimidate the old man. They demanded to know where Death was. The old man tells them that the path ahead leads straight to Death. The group of men stumbled upon a pile of gold along the road. One of them is sent into the village to get food for the rest while they wait on the gold. They didn't want to be seen taking the gold, so they waited until nightfall. While they were all separated they all plotted in their heads to kill one another and take each others portions of gold. In the end they all end up dead which indicates that Death was their endgame. The ending of this tale had a very nice twist. I thought they would actually find the figure of Death, but instead found it amongst themselves.

Canterbury Tales by Eva March Tappan, link to online reading

(A Pardoner, Source: Alamy)

Reading Notes: Welsh Fairy Tales (Emerson) Part A

The Welsh (Emerson) unit was a really great read, but the language was a bit hard to understand since it is in Welsh. It's a lot different than English in that it's spelling is quite different. I chose this story because it was something that I've never heard about. After reading Part A I began to realize that this unit had many stories that revolved around fairies. I soon found out that fairies were more scary mythical creatures than I had previously known. I thought they were all like Disney fairies. I thought wrong. In the first of the stories there is a main character who is the queen of all fairies. She isn't the only character that is important in the story, but she has a big impact on the story. This story in particular showed the reader that fairies are very reasonable. They can use their magical powers for good or for revenge. The story is about the fairies who help the lives of two men and one of the men's sons. They are forever grateful and in return the son of the men aid the fairies in their quest to vanquish an evil witch. After their task is complete, the fairies grant the son a beautiful wife and they live happily ever after. If I were to retell this story I would want to keep a lot of the story the same. Except I would try to tell it from the sons perspective, this would give the story a new set of eyes and everything would be viewed differently. Even the emotions would be different. 

Welsh Fairy Tales (Emerson) by Peter Emerson, link to online reading

(Fairies, Source: Pinterest)

Week 12 Story: The Jealous Cheerleader

It was a Monday morning at Sunnydale High School. It was like any other morning except today was the first day of the new school year. You could see everyone excited to see each other after a long and hot summer. Especially Jennifer and her cheer-leading girls. Jennifer was the captain of the cheerleaders at school. She was top of her class and was liked by all the students, even teachers, at Sunnydale. Boys would go crazy over her. That all changed when Molly showed up. She was a transfer student from the north side. She was everything Jennifer, but even better. This got Jennifer very angry. She became obsessed with becoming the most popular girl of the school again. She became jealous.

Jennifer devised a plan to get rid of Molly once and for all, so that she could sit atop of the popularity scale in the end. Given Molly's rapid popularity at school, she was almost forced to join the cheer-leading squad. This wall all a part of Jennifer's devious plan. Now that she had Molly right where she wanted, all she had to do was wait till their first practice.

The day had come. Sunnydale's first cheer-leading practice took place after school. All was going well and everyone seemed to enjoy the practice so far. The girls then proceeded to the lifting portion of the practice and the girl of choice was none other than Molly herself. Jennifer was very eager to be one of the girls to lift Molly. Everything was going smoothly. All the lifters, including Jennifer, got Molly in the air, but once it was time for them to catch her everything went wrong. Jennifer was suppose to catch her, but instead "slipped" away and this leaded to Molly crashing down onto the grass. Molly was rushed to the school infirmary and was diagnosed with a broken foot from her landing. Jennifer was so excited to her about Molly's injury because that meant her plan to take her out was coming to fruition.

Little did Jennifer know that this injury caused the whole school to feel sympathy towards Molly. They teachers even took time out of their lectures and had all the students write "get well" cards for Molly. Many students even went to visit Molly in the infirmary and signed her foot cast. Jennifer's planned had totally backfired. Eventually by the end of the school year, all the students had found out that Jennifer was the one who purposefully didn't catch Molly and gave her the broken foot. Jealous Jennifer was never heard from again. Some say she transferred schools.

(Cheerleaders, Source: Forever Twenty Somethings)

Author's Note:
In the original story there was an uncle who took the every son that this family bore and killed him. He had killed 3 before a 4th child came into this world. He was kept a secret and the uncle's wife told him that they had bore a daughter and not a a son. However, the uncle found out anyways when he saw what was underneath his clothes. The uncle asked for the son and took him out to get some logs. They wandered out far into the forest where the son got caught in one of the logs. The uncle left him there to die and rot however he had tools with him that led to his escape. He gathered the log and left them in front of his uncles tent. The uncle was furious and tried to kill him many more times. Next was with ducks and eggs, then it was with clams, and then finally he made the nephew a box. He trapped the son inside this box and threw him into the ocean where he drifted from island to island until finally he halted. Two daughters found him on the shore and brought him back to their village where the chief decided to care and raise him. However, he began to miss his previous home and his parents, so with permission from the Eagle people, he flew back to the previous village. He brought them back a huge whale, but the jealous uncle took it all for himself and left none for the nephews parents. He was furious and took the uncle up into the sky and dropped him into the ocean. He couldn't swim for he drowned and died. The nephew got his revenge and took his parents back to his new found home where they all lived happily. I wanted to modernize this story and placed the setting in a high school and centered the story around two girls. One was the popular cheerleader of the school, Jennifer, and the other was a new transfer student who won every one's heart, Molly. My retelling changed a lot of things, but the main story is the same with the jealously playing a huge part.

Bibliography: "The Jealous Uncle" by Stith Thompson. Web Source

Reading Notes: Apache Tales Part B

In Part B of the reading, there were many stories that consists of a main character, the coyote. At first I thought he was the main character of each story, but I was wrong. He was only a support character. I also initially thought that these tales were connected in some way, but again I was wrong. In the first story the coyote is a trickster who plots to steal a poor man's wife. One day the poor man his household and when he returns he finds that it is an empty house. The coyote has stolen the wife and taken her back to his tipi. Eventually the poor man rescues his wife and when he returns he devises a plan to exact revenge on the evil coyote. He burns rocks till there are fiery hot and wraps in fat, so that the coyote can't resist them. This works and the coyote chows them down only to die in the end. In the next story, there is an owl who posses with him black arrows that can kill any man. The coyote in this story is greedy and wants them for himself, so he breaks the owls leg and steals the arrows. The owl is left for dead and now everyone knew the coyote was the one who possessed the arrows, so they were afraid. A pack of antelope aspire to fool the coyote an retrieve the arrows back. They get the coyote to put his quiver on one antelope and his arrows on another. This way two parts that equal a whole were divided. They told the coyote that this was a race to get his arrows back, but when they begin to run the antelope initiate their devious plan and run in different directions. The coyote is hopeless because he can't catch both. The next coupe stories involved the coyote again, but the confusing part was whether the coyote was the protagonist or antagonist. In one story is steals and another he is the victim. In my opinion, if I rewrote one of these stories I would make the coyote a adversary because coyote have a stereotypical appeal.

Apache Tales by P.E. Goddard, link to online reading

(Coyote, Source: National Geographic)

Reading Notes: Apache Tales Part A

After reading the collection of Apache Tales I was very confused. The stories themselves were clear and the plot was understandable, but the use of their language was very confusing. Mainly it was the use of pronouns that caught me off guard. If I use one of these stories to retell then my main objective will be to make the stories more understandable for the reader to follow. One of the stories about Naiyenesgani utilizes the colors blue, yellow, black, and mixed colors. These colors are a very integral part of every story that keep reappearing. The story goes that Naiyenesgani goes to hunt down a swamp monster and save the people of his tribe. The integral colors are used in his hoops that are used to drain the water and kill the monster. I can see that the colors are very important to every story, so making sure I utilize them in my own story will be very important.

Apache Tales by P.E. Goddard, link to online reading

(Apache Tales, Source: Tales of Faerie)