Reading Notes: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Part B

· I should practice using all caps for emphasis. That’s a nice touch.

· This is a lot of dialogue: that’s all this part of the story consists of. I should try to incorporate more dialogue. I should also try to include how my characters react to dialogue, like “Alice felt dreadfully puzzled.”

· I love this use of characters. It would be fun to write a story where anyone and everything can be a character. (The Mad Hatter and Time used to be friends, but they quarreled last March.)

· “ . . . said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.” I should qualify my characters that way.

· Alice is rude.

· Ohhh I’m not sure I’ve ever before realized that the White Rabbit and the March Hare are different.

· I also like the idea of tricking someone horrid while still being truthful. “Are their heads off?” “Their heads are gone.” I should try to do something like that in one of my stories.

· I’m sad for the hedgehogs and flamingos. I suppose I could write something from their point of view.

· Also, there’s the idea of a silly dilemma: how does one behead the Cheshire Cat when only its head is visible? I could have Jack confound a villain with a problem like that, if I feel like coming up with my own story.

· Boy, Alice really is kind of bratty.

· Everything about this trial is falling to pieces. If I were to rewrite it somehow, everything would have to fall to pieces.

(Illustration by Arthur Rackham)

Bibliography: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

Reading Notes: Celtic Fairy Tales, Part B

· I feel like this is dialect done well.

· I’m feeling as though I should have heard of saint Kavin (Kevin?) before now . . .

· One possible theme: honesty is rewarded.

· Ahhh I’m so sad that the goose died shortly after! Also, why couldn’t Saint Kavin just restore the king, instead of (or in addition to) the goose?

· I don’t understand the part about the giant at the beginning. What did he have to do with anything?

· So, if I write a story based on a Celtic fairy tale, death need not be permanent. Also, wow. I’m struck by how cruel Yellow Face is. Like, the bad guy is really bad.

· AHHH OH MY GOSH I’M SO UPSET.

· Basically, I could write a story about anyone or anything being falsely accused and punished for something, when they have actually done a good deed.

· I kind of like this story as it is, and wouldn’t really want to modernize it or anything. Maybe I won’t use it, because I already like (/hate because it makes me so upset) it so much.

· I like how this story took proverbs and adages (I assume these would all have been well known) and had the protagonist use them in real situations, and be rewarded for it. I wonder if I could choose three more maxims to have come up in an adventure? That could be fun.

· Once again, stating the obvious is wonderful. “Well, it was odd that here he should be in a thick wood he had never set eyes upon, turning Patrick Rooney upon a spit.”

· I like that twist: the tale just ended with him having been asleep.

· It seems as though these tales may be ending happily more often than some others.

(Illustration by John D. Batten)

Bibliography:  Celtic Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs

Reading Notes: Celtic Fairy Tales, Part A

· I like the relationship between the father’s name and the son’s name: Conn and Connla.

· The first story (Connla and the Fairy Maiden) pits different sorts of longings against one another. I feel like the overall theme has to do with the joy and closeness of home and family, versus unknown, bright and promising splendors far off.

· This has a lot of dialogue. I should work on incorporating more dialogue.

· It doesn’t seem right to steal the leprechaun’s gold L.

· What if I told a tale that made everyone feel bad for the leprechauns?

· What if instead he got back and the garter was still there, but the leprechaun had dug up the gold?

· The tale of the witches was strange, and I didn’t particularly like it. What if instead they were playground bullies? The principle thing seems to be wicked people who are bested.

· The next tale was about the maiden from the lake. It’s quite sad. I could make it about a dating relationship. I could switch it so he would kick her out if she hit him three times. I could also switch it up and tell it from the perspective of one of her sons. Ooh! I could make it into a bedtime story, where she’s tucking in one of her kids and telling the story to one of her kids, after two blows have been struck. The kid could be super confused, or not realize that it’s about his own parents.

· I like this story of him completing such a frightening task! I think my favorite elements were his courage and his sass (“I see those, but I’ll sew this!”), so I would love to write up heroes that possess similar qualities.

· I love the quips! “If they were alive now, they would not be alive then.”

· I don’t understand the logic behind all of these.

· The idea of filling a sieve with water seems to come up a lot. It reminds me of the Celtic song “Scarborough Fair”.

· Wow. What a twist.

· I feel bad for the second wife… she’s doomed to always be second favorite.

(illustration by John D. Batten)

Bibliography: Celtic Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs

Reading Notes: Alice in Wonderland, Part A

· I love how fantastical this all is.

· I think that one of the skillful things about his writing is the specificity. I’m thinking of the orange marmalade specifically. I should try to emulate that.

· I love this dialogue, and the interjections by the narrator appealing to the reader to consider what he is saying. Once again, I’d love to write like that.

· I also like his repetition of ideas. “either the locks were too large, or the key was too small”

· I also like how he states the obvious. She’s a little girl who know that if you hold a red-hot poker too long it will burn you, and things of that sort.

· He also states the obvious in very subdued terms. Things marked ‘poison’ are almost certain to disagree with you.

· Ooh I also enjoy how she talks to herself. It adds character to the whole thing.

· Once again, humor in the obvious: “there’s no sort of use in knocking . . . because I’m on the same side of the door as you are.”

· I didn’t know that there was also a Duchess who was bad, in addition to the Queen.

· I like the idea of incorporating rhymes into my story. He does that well.

(Illustration by Arthur Rackham)

Bibliography:  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

Reading Notes: Eskimo Folk Tales, Part 1

(Inuit Seal Hunting)

· It seems as though every creation story contains a great flood. Like, everywhere.

· It’s interesting to me how there seems to be this idea in the creation story of men kind of knowing what had to come next: women sewed clothes before there were children to dress in them, they desired dogs, they knew to progress from eating of the earth to hunting.

· What an unpleasant story! I like how the guy plotting murder gets his comeuppance, but it’s still sad. I’m also glad that Nukúnguasik didn’t get accused of murdering him.

· Once again, I’m very glad that the innocent bear didn’t get falsely accused of murdering the man when in fact the man attacked him first.

· What if the bear had been unhappy about the fact that the people eat bears?

· Awww I feel so bad for Qalagánguasê L. Why on earth did he tell all the people about the ghosts a minute after the ghosts told him not to?

· I could tell that story from the perspective of a villager. It might be unpleasant, though, because I would have to justify being mean.

· Wow I wish I could get married that easily.

· Wait so what happened to the girl?

· How does the girl feel about this? One day she’s married then the next someone’s like “no, you’re not his wife” and then you’re not? Why can that happen? (Yes, I know it’s a different culture.)

· “[It] always happened that he shamefully overslept himself every time he had made up his mind to go out hunting.” Same.

· I like that he’s willing to say that sheer luck caused him to save the man, not merit.

· This reminds me a bit of Samson and Delilah.

· So, did he end up living in the hills alone?

· But… the dude is married.

· Wow! He destroyed their sledges and took their stuff. I don’t like him.

Bibliography:  Eskimo Folk Tales, by Knud Rasmussen.

Story Planning: Jack and the Beanstalk

This is a story planning post, preparing to write a new story for my storybook.  I’m going to mostly be doing research on what story I want to use, and what are some ways I could shake that story up.

·      The Ass, the Table and the Stick

o   This has the folkloric 3, which I like, and isn’t likely to be a familiar story.

o   I would probably want to change the end, because I don’t like it and I want to like Jack.

o   It’s a good length.  It only needs to be shortened a bit.

·      Little Jack Horner

o   I honestly have no ideas at the moment of how to expand this, but they may come eventually.  Or I could combine a couple of the nursery rhymes.

·      Jack Madden (The Legend of Knockgrafton)

o   I’m not sure whether I could use this, because it ends with him dying…

o   But it might be good to have a story where Jack isn’t really clever?

o   But it wouldn’t fit the introduction very well.

·      The Earl of Cattenborough

o   Oooh I did like this one.  It’s unfamiliar, and involves cleverness.  However, this time it’s on the part of the cat, not Jack himself.  I’m not sure if I like that, or if I would prefer to try and make it so that he’s contributing more.  I did say earlier that Jacks are clever.  Also, it may end up being too similar to the first story I told.

·      Jack and Jill

o   Same as Jack Horner

·      Jack Sprat

o   Same again.

·      Jack Be Nimble

o   And again

·      Jack and the Beanstalk

o   (Note: ) This one isn’t in the untextbook, but I’m sure that I could find a nice version to follow online.  Or, I suppose I could potentially go from memory, and really make it my own.  This story would add an element of fantasy that the others really don’t have.

(The Earl of Cattenborough will be Pleased to Partake of a Potato)

Bibliography:  These resources are from doing a search on the name Jack in the untextbook, found here.  It includes stories (of the above names) rewritten by Joseph Jacobs and Andrew Lang (and others, but those were the ones I might use).

Reading Notes: Native American Hero Tales, Part A

· The first story is the one about the unnatural uncle and the boy who becomes an eagle. I’m left very confused as to a couple of things. First, how can the uncle murder people and everyone know about it, and nothing be done? That’s so weird. Also, if the boy and his parents and everyone know that the uncle is trying to kill the nephew, why on earth does he still go off alone with him? Can’t he just be like, “No, you’re not trustworthy.”? I guess I could take some of those confusing elements and amplify them in a story to show why they’re kind of absurd? But, I suppose that it just shows a greater respect for authority than our culture, so I could emphasize that too.

· The second story is about the men who are pulled far away on their canoe while sealing. It stood out to me that there is no mention of whether anyone did anything right or wrong, but Bluejay, who had teased Grouse and persuaded the others to be stingy with him, seems to have to endure the most trials. Maybe I could write about these incidents from the point of view of village people? Why do they feel compelled to challenge outsiders like that, especially when it’s bad for themselves too?

· I don’t understand Dug-From-Ground at all. It seemed pretty random. What if I changed it so that instead of there being an unaccepting mother there was an unaccepting young woman that he wanted to marry?

· I love that the parting curse of the baby eagles is rheumatism.

· So Jonayaíyin kills the eagle and the elk. My favorite part about the first adventure is how he gets so much help, and it’s obvious that that’s necessary. I could incorporate that element. I also like how the bat is willing to resign herself to the fact that she lost her right to her feathers.

(eagle nest)

Bibliography:  Stith Thompson's anthology, Tales of the North American Indians.

Week 8 Growth Mindset

I’m not really sure how my growth mindset has changed thus far this semester. It seems likely that I’ve regressed in a couple ways. This is a much lighter semester for me than the past two, so I’ve been using my time poorly (isn’t it frustrating how that happens?). Accordingly, even though perhaps I’ve had time to, I haven’t been going above and beyond. However, I think there are ways that this class can help with that. For example, through this class I can make the choice (and I hope that I will) to read a bunch of classics that I’ve been interested in for years but haven’t gotten around to. Because this class is so flexible, it provides me with the option to go above and beyond, and learn more that I’m interested in, if I want to.

I think another way this class may be useful is in learning to take feedback (and especially negative feedback) humbly, and with a heart that is willing to listen and change. I generally enjoy positive feedback and want things to be right the first time (as is natural), so it’s good to practice revision, or having different people express different tips on how they think I could improve.

One thing that this class makes easy is to not focus overly much on grades. Generally, I hope that in my major classes or other ones I’m interested in I care a lot more about learning than my grade. It’s easy to do that for this class too, because we’re given so many options about how and what we will learn, so that the grade just isn’t really a stressful thing.

Basically, I want to have a mindset of learning for learning's sake.

(Photo by Thomas Ulrich, found on flickr)

Week 8 Reflections

I have definitely been enjoying this class so far. I think that part of it is that the reading is over things that I want to read. I want to be well informed about culture and folk stories from around the world! That being said, when I was looking ahead to what reading I was going to do in the coming weeks, I was definitely thinking, “I’m going to have to read a bunch extra of these.” Maybe I’ll read some extra British or Celtic stories to try and find more stories involving someone named Jack, for my storybook. That would probably be good.

I think that perhaps I haven’t learned a ton about myself as a writer, but I have been reminded of some things I used to know. For example, I had forgotten how much I enjoy and find it fairly easy to write fiction. What a relief to not be writing essays! I’m quite happy with my storybook choice. What I’m going to do is continue to find Jack stories and rewrite them. I don’t plan on changing or modernizing them or anything like that very much. The exception would be if I choose to use a short source, such as a nursery rhyme, I’ll make it longer and add my own twist, like I did on the first story based on a nursery rhyme.

I think the thing that I admire most in other people’s stories is simple readability. I enjoy it when the story flows smoothly and naturally, so I can be engaged without worrying about trying too hard to understand it. The thing that I would like to improve for my own story’s readability is to grow in knowing when to incorporate dialogue and how much to do so naturally.

(Fountain Pen, from Pixabay)

Reading Notes: Nigerian Folk Stories, Part B

· Could I do something other than thunder and lightning? What about rain and a rainbow, or something cheesy like that?

· I love the small details. “[H]e caught and ate a spider.” In fact, I loved all the details about the monkey. He seems like a delightful, distractible fellow, and I would enjoy seeming more of him. What if I were to write a story about him, and mischief he gets into?

· I feel like the solution to this wasn’t to say that no one could have a tame animal, but whatever.

· What if the mother moderated between the brothers, so that when they were about to fight each other she made them talk it out first, and bloodshed was avoided?

· There’s the one where the tortoise figures out the hippo’s name. I want to somehow mix that with the story of Rumpelstiltskin. Could I meld the two? I could have something where the hippo does the tortoise a favor, but requires his firstborn unless he guesses his name, or something along those lines…

· I don’t really like the story about the dog and the sheep. It’s too sad.

· Ugh that’s horrible. What if when a man behaves badly as a husband he gets thrown into slavery and she gets a new husband? I wish there had been grace. Actually, what I really wish is that he had stuck to one wife. I wonder how I could rework this…

· There are a lot of fat women in these tales.

· Wow, I’m so sad about the old woman.

· I don’t know if I think the tortoise cheated or not. He didn’t tell the whole tale, certainly.

· I could tell a story that revolves around the custom of killing twins. Maybe, there could be a Romulus and Remus type situation happening.

· I don’t like the stories that pit friends against each other.

(red-headed weaver bird/Nsasak)

Bibliography:  Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, by Elphinstone Dayrell.

Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales (Ozaki), Part B

· Ok, so the first story is about the priest who stays at the old woman (cannibal goblin)’s house. He looks into the back room, and it’s full of bones, so he runs away. Even though it ended up being very good that he looked, I’m kind of annoyed that he broke his promise to the old woman. What if I changed the story to where she only ate people who disobeyed her, so if he’s honest and doesn’t look in the room, he’s safe?

· An arm is such a strange thing to have taken. What about a bracelet or something? Also, I feel like he should ask this woman a question she would only know the answer to if she actually is his old nurse.

· What if I rewrite the story so that Watanabe successfully keeps the arm from the ogre, but then because of that the ogre keeps bothering him and everyone, because he doesn’t want to leave the area until he has his arm back?

· The next story is just like Cinderella.

· What if I focus on the stepbrother’s point of view? Maybe he is good and kind, and loves his sister, and wants his mother to be kind to her?

· Ahhh I’m so sad the little boy diedL. Is there something else, less extreme, that I could have happen to him?

· What if I moved the setting of this tale, so that instead of saving the emperor by praying in verse, she had to petition a principal to make recess longer by asking him in free-style rap, or something more modern like that?

· So he finds her and learns the truth and takes her home… This story reminds me a bit of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. What if I mix the two, and have the servant be friend with seven dwarves out in the woods, and she befriends them and charms the animals and such?

(Tatsuta River)

Bibliography:  Japanese Fairy Tales, retold by Yei Theodora Ozaki