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