Reading Notes: Anderson Fairy Tales (Part B)

Bibliography: Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Anderson

Translated in 1872

The Little Mermaid

-much more gruesome than the original

- sisters actually have speaking role

-"immortal soul"

-sad ending, not like Disney

Gazing at the other world

Reading Notes: Anderson Fairy Tales (Part A)

Bibliography: Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Anderson

Translated in 1872

"Why can I not sleep?"

Reading A:

The Princess and the Pea

The Emperor’s New Suit

The Brave Tin Soldier (2 parts)

The Wicked Prince

The Little Match-Seller

Princess and the Pea

-story I used to read when I was little

-it is the same as I remember it: this is the first one I have read that has been like that

Emperor's New Suit

-laughed a little at first bc of “Emperor’s New Groove” with the llama

-silk and gold-cloth

-remember reading this one as a child as well, and not fully understanding it

Brave Tin Soldier

-great imagery: “the tin soldier could already see daylight shining where the arch ended”

Reading Notes A: Fairy Tales By Brothers Grimm

Bibliography: Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm
Read the story (or listen) here

The Frog Prince
-interesting because of the description of the princess: "put on her bonnet and clogs"
-golden ball
-"I want not your pearls, and jewels, and fine clothes, but if you will love me and let em live with you and eat off of your golden plate, and sleep upon your bed, I will bring you your ball again"
-blackmailed by a frog?
-Open the door, my princess dear,
Open the door to thy true love here!
And mind the words that thou and I said
By the fountain cool, in the greenwood shade

The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean 

The Mouse, the Bird, and The Sausage

-interesting because not happy endings

-lists as titles?

Why are some so much more common than others?

Selected because of the imagery

Reading Notes A: Alice's Adventures

Reading Notes A

Bibliography: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865) read here

Readings:

Down the Rabbit-Hole (3 parts)

Advice from a Caterpillar (3 parts)

Pig and Pepper (3 parts)

love this photo- reminds me of when my grandmother read me this story as a child
Link here 

Down the Rabbit Hole

-Alice- normal girl, has a sister, bored, follows White Rabbit with pink eyes (albino?)

-fell down the hole

-”Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again”

-entertaining herself

-didn’t hurt self when fell

-”There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked, and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again.”

-mystical objects: small door, three-legged glass table, tiny golden key, drink, little glass box

Advice from a Caterpillar

-Caterpillar- could talk, hookah, sleepy

-”Who are YOU?”

-accused Alice of having a temper

-repetition

-seeing a lot in this story that seems like the nursery rhymes I read last week!

- good advice?

Pig and Pepper

-Fish-Footman

-”From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet”

-EXCITING: favorite character

-Cheshire Cat

- “‘You don’t know much,’ said the Duchess, ‘and that’s a fact’”

-the rhymes have different formats

Love this quote: So she set the little creature down and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. 'If it had grown up,' she said to herself, 'it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.'

Reading Notes: Nursery Rhymes (Part B)

The Nursery Rhyme Book by Andrew Lang

Read it here

Reading Notes B:

-Jingles

-Love and Matrimony

-Natural History Part 1 and 2

-Accumulative Stories

-Relics

Little Miss Muffet: a relic

Jingles:

-when I think of jingle, I think of television commercials

-onomonopias

-many sounds and names

-quite a few recognizable

Love and Matrimony:

-these were adorable to me

-”Jack and Jill” is an all time favorite

-I do not understand why Jack Sprat was classified in this other than the fact he was married

Natural History:

-all include animals or months or locations

Accumulative Stories:

-I like these! They are longer and kind of keep going

-reminds me of the “picnic” game from childhood: each child has to say what they will bring to a picnic; after saying what they will bring they have to go back and say what all of the children before them said they were bringing; keep going until someone messes up

Relics:

-Miss Muffet: love

-some are quite exclamatory

Reading Notes: Nursery Rhymes (Part A)

English Nursery Rhymes

The Nursery Rhyme Book by Andrew Lang

Read it here

Reading Notes A:

-Tales

-Proverbs

-Songs, Part 1 and 2

-Riddles

-Paradoxes

-Charms and Lullabies

-Games

Humpty Dumpty: a Riddle

Tales:

-seem to tell a story more than a lesson

-lots of repetition

-”head, head, head”

-”make, make, make”

Proverbs:

-confusing

-do not make a lot of sense to me

-also quite repetitive

Songs:

-very rhythmic

-lengthier than previous (proverbs and tales)

-Interesting: I knew “Polly put the kettle on” growing up but we always spoke it, never sang

-many of these are also popular in the United States

Riddles:

-I liked these but many did not make sense

-Humpty Dumpty: one of my favorites as a child

Paradoxes:

-I love reading these because they make your mind scramble

-used to babysit some children with a book of these that they always wanted to read and I could never get them right on the first try!

-kind of like tongue twisters

Charms and Lullabies:

-even more like tongue twisters

-”Peter picked”... one I used to say as a child

-some of these were used by my kindergarten teacher to teach kids how to properly speak/help with lisps

Games:

-never realized “Jack Be Nimble” was a game

-some of these are really fun! Very entertaining

Week 10: Reading Notes B: Tejas

When the Storm God Rides In

Tejas and Other Indian Legends

Bibliography: by Florence Stratton

Collected by Bessie M. Reid

1936

Read them here

READING B:

Favorite readings

From "When the Rainbow was Torn"

Why Hummingbirds Drink Only Dew:

-interesting personification of hummingbird

-”bad habit of gambling”

The Maiden Who Loved a Star:

-Indian girl from desert of western country

-looking for purple ripe fruit of the prickly pear

-noticed one star was brighter than the others one day when the sun began to set

-personification of the star: “Was the star winking down at her? She thought it was. She dreamed of the shining star that night, and she saw in her dream that the star was the home of a fine, tall youth, a sky dweller”

-visited her star for seven days

-”each night she dreamed of this fair young man”

-”full of love”

-”unhappy because she was so far away from her lover in the star-frosted sky”

-decided she wanted to die, so went to old witch woman

-wanted to be taken up to the sky “to live in the star with her lover”

-old woman says she must live but that she can change her into a different form

-drank from the potion the old lady gave her

-turned into a new type of shrub

-”When the sky youth saw what had happened, he leaned far out of an opening in his star lodge. He leaned so far out that the edges of the star broke with his weight, and he fell with sparkling pieces of star straight towards the maiden who had become a bush”

-”the youth was changed to purple blossoms”

-surprised not a shooting star

-became the ceniza

What they became

How Sickness Entered the World:

-sickness used to not exist

-”sickness was unknown in the world until two young Indians killed a messenger from the Great Spirit”

-dying medicine man

When the Rainbow was Torn:

-interesting: “there are flowers whose petals have in them part of the very colors belonging to the rainbow”

-cactus flowers

-Rainbow never touched cactus plants

-got stuck in the thorns on a rainy day

-white cactus flowers filled with the rainbow's colors

-BEAUTIFUL imagery

Rainbow Cactus

Week 10- Reading Notes A: Tejas

When the Storm God Rides In

Tejas and Other Indian Legends

Bibliography: by Florence Stratton

Collected by Bessie M. Reid

1936

Read them here

READING A:

Favorite readings

When the Storm God Rides:

-”great black-winged thunder bird which he rode like a horse over the Gulf at certain times”

-Storm God created the islands

-lived in the seas below the Gulf of Mexico

The Plant that Grows into Trees:

-interesting theory as to why mistletoe grows on trees

Mistletoe in a tree

Why the Woodpecker Pecks:

-simile: “looking just like a little man in a black coat and a red hat.”

-”And he is smart. If he sees you looking at him he stops pecking and slips around the other side of the limb or the pole and only sticks out his red head to peep at you”

-mescal plant: had little knobs that when eaten gave a magic power

-”The Indians who ate them had visions or dreams. They could see their gods and talk with their ancestors. But only those Indians who were medicine men and had the right to see strange things had the right to eat they mescal button. They warned everybody else not to touch them, or bad luck would come to them”

-everyone decided not to listen- poor little children wandered around hungry

-The Manitou “waved his hand over the Indians. They became birds. The black robes they were wearing turned into black feathers, and the red feathers they wore in their hair turned into the red head of the woodpeckers”

Woodpecker

Old Woolly Bird’s Sacrifice:

-simile: “the big flowers of the magnolia tree are like white stars scattered among the leaves”

-Woolly Bird: old Indian, gave up his life for his people

-Indians were dying of starvation

-”old heart was heavy with sadness” as people planned to leave because they were going to starve to death

-”Old Ones Not Afraid to Die”

The Cloud That Was Lost:

-clouds “float around in the sky during the day” and then “go to sleep on the tops of the [mountain] peaks”

-”they do this because they become tired while waiting in the sky to grow heavy enough to send down the rains”

-cloud ran away from brothers and sisters one day

-simile: “It had been chasing its tiny white tail like a puppy”

-rain= crying

-”wild phlox”- evening soft colors from runaway clouds

Week 9: Reading Notes- Eskimo Folk Tales- Part B

Section: Eskimo Folk Tales

Bibliography: William John Alexander. 1921

Eskimo Folk Tales

https://archive.org/details/eskimofolktales00rasm

Icy Ocean view

Favorites

Papik:

-used to go out hunting with his wife’s brother, Ailaq

-Ailaq always had a seal in tow, but Papik always was empty handed

-theme for these tales

-one day when Ailaq didn’t return home, Papik’s mother accused him of killing Ailaq

-”old woman” another theme

“‘You killed him, and said no word. The day shall yet come when I will eat you alive, for you killed Ailaq, you and no other”

-Papik grew scared and stopped hunting all together for quite some time

-the next time he did hunt, a monster fell upon Papik to devour him

The Eagle and The Whale:

-many brothers

-two sisters both of an age to marry but they would not take a husband

-”What sort of a husband do you want, then? An eagle, perhaps?”

Angangujuk:

-father who was very strong

-had no neighbors: three of them lived alone

-mother, father, Angangujuk (whom I will call “Ang”)

-one day mother called him and could not find him

-husband said “It is you, wicked old hag, who have killed him. And now I will kill you”

-”old hag”- continuation of the old woman theme

-the death/alleged killing of family members

-begged him to wait

-spirits: “He is up in a place between two great cliffs, and two old inland folk are looking after him”

-Ang refused to eat

Atarssuaq

-had many enemies

-enemies tried to hurt him but could not kill him

-his wife bore him a son

-came back from hunting one day and saw he had a son

-”Then he took that son of his and bore him down to the water and threw him in. And waited until he began to kick out violently, and then took him up again. And so he did with him every day for long after, while the child was growing. And thus the boy became a very clever swimmer”

-enemies eventually killed Atarssauq