Week 12 Reading Diary : Alice in Wonderland continued.

Reading Diary B  : Alice in Wonderland 
Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865).

I love Alice in Wonderland and I love that I get to read the actual stories by Lewis Carroll! I have only seen Disney movie and loved getting to read the stories that the movie was based off of.

I would feel so awkward if I was Alice, arriving at the tea party in the Mad-Tea Party story! The March Hare and the Mad Hatter were pretty rude and had some sly and devious remarks to make to Alice! I wonder why the table was set for more than three people if the Mad Hatter and March Hare didn't want there to be more than three people at their tea party? I'm glad Alice stormed off because the tea party was too much commotion for even me!

I love how the cards call each other by their numbers in the story The Queen's Croquet-Ground!That would be interesting to retell a story and name all the characters odd names or use numbers! The Queen is a firecracker! I could name few people I know that would be furious about colored roses! I loved how strange and different the croquet game is in this story : the use of flamingos for mallets, hedgehogs for balls, and soldiers doing back bends to make arches! So fun! I would love to use this element in my storytelling this week! 

I like how all the characters and parts of the previous chapters make full circle in the Who Stole The Hearts chapter. I was surprised seeing the Mad Hatter as a witness and the white rabbit as the reader. I'm glad the Mad Hatter got away before they caught him to execute him! Why do the Queen and King want everyone executed? That is not good leadership at all! I'm glad Alice woke up in time, but man what strange dream! She must have taken a lot of melatonin to have this peculiar dream! 

Mad Tea Party (By Sir John Tenniel)

Mythology and Folklore Storybook Topics

1. Possible Topic :  Animals. I am an avid animal lover so I think a storybook with animals or an animal as the topic would be interesting for me and enjoyable to create. I like the idea of using a frametale with animals as the storytellers, such as Tales of a Parrot, where a parrot tells the story. After going through the topic list, I think I would want to focus on a "real" animal, and not a mythological one.
Research : After researching through past projects, the un-textbook, and other online sources, I found of a lot of good information and research. The past project, Old Cat + New Puppy + Aesop's Fables = Life Lessons, has a cat as a frame-teller and the author retold/re-wrote a story from Aesop's Fables from the cat's perspective. I enjoyed this approach while still incorporating original work from Aesop's Fables. I liked a bunch of images from Winter's Aesop such as the picture below because they provide an accurate illustration that helps you imagine the story in your head. 

Winter's Aesop 

2. Possible Topic : Fairy Tales. This topic caught my attention because who doesn't like a good fairy tale? I agree with what I read on the topic page  and want to defiantly steer away from Disney and maybe try to expand my horizon and think of some different fairy tales to retell or use as the basis of my storybook. I ran across the The Ugly Duckling from Andrew Lang's Fairy Books and am familiar with the story but was more importantly intrigued with the meaning behind the story.
Research : I looked further into the fairy tale on wikipedia and found that there might have been some other motivation to the story. Instead of using this story as a metaphor for inner beauty, it is speculated that it can also be a metaphor for secret royal linage. I found that interesting and possibly fun to use other morals, themes, adaptations, and metaphors to retell the story. Maybe in current day situation?

3. Possible Topic : Nursery Rythmes. Nursery rhythms are shorter than fairy tales and could be an advantage to myself to expand on an idea and use my imagination without any limitation. Some nursery rhythms are hard for me to interpret so I had to do some research to understand the basics and plot summaries. I feel since the rhythms are so short, there is a lack of detail, so the interpretation I could take on the nursery rhythms have endless opportunities and no limits. 
Research : . I looked as some past storybooks about nursery rhythms from last semester and loved the creativity and interpretation they took. There was only 2 storybooks that had nursery rhythms as their topics. Both were based off of The Real Mother Goose by Blanche Fisher Wright. There are endless amount of nursery rhythms in The Real Mother Goose and I feel like I could intertwine some of these rhythms together with the same character or using individual stories that happen to affect the next story in the book.

4. Possible Topic : Urban Legends. The title "urban legends" caught my attention instantly. I expected a lot of the topics on the topics list to be very ancient, and traditional. But in fact, a lot of topics included football, love, college life, marriage, animals, food, and so on. Football would be a very fun topic because I love the sport and have so many personal experiences with Football since I have front row tickets every game;) (hence being a cheerleader).
Research : I found so many topics on snopes.com that were so interesting. For example, the Food topic had so many interesting urban myths about foods such as Walmart great value ice cream not melting and how the Chinese are raising St. Barnards for food . I was actually so sad about the St. Barnards myth turing out to be true.

Storytelling Week 2 : Jealously Never Wins XOXO

Jealously Never Wins
XOXO

At the final summer hooray before the fall school year begun, Blair Waldorf held the annual back to school bash at her house in The Hamptons. Blair was the most popular girl at Upper East Side High and everyone worshiped the queen bee. In order for her party to be a hit, like usual, Blair asked her talented and glamourous cousin, Lauren, to provide entertainment for the night. Her voice was beautiful and her music was hip. Everyone was satisfied and elated with Blair's selection.

All of Blair's friends could not stop admiring Lauren and were so ecstatic that Blair let her upper-east side friends meet her cousin. All except one, Ashely. Ashley had always had the lead role in musicals in school, become appointed president of the choir club, and took voice lessons weekly with an elite voice coach. Ashley was envious of all the praise that Blair and her friends were showering Lauren with. Ashely had always wanted to win Blair over. She craved to have a friend as popular, trendy, and powerful as Blair. Impressing Blair would ensure that Ashely's senior year would be off to fabulous start and maybe she could finally sit on the front steps for lunch with the rest of Blair's posse.

Ashley was sure that she could sing and provide entertainment as good as or even better than Ashely. She climbed gracefully and effortlessly onto the stage and started to sing one of her personally written songs, one that no one has ever heard before. In fact, Ashely had never let anyone hear her sing before. 

Confused and surprised, Blair and her Lauren obsessed posse turned around to see Ashley all alone up on stage, belting emotional and personal lyrics out. Desperate for some positive or enthusiastic crowd response, Ashely began to panic. She started to stutter her lyrics and stood there completely silent. Her mind fell blank and she could not recover or improvise as a natural stage performer would.  

The party fell silent. All that could be heard where whispers to one another commenting on the embarrassing and humiliating situation Ashely just put herself in. "Let's leave the entertaining to a someone who knows what they are doing, and someone who doesn't eat lunch in the hallway,"Blair snickered. The upper-east students burst out into contagious laughter and turned away from Ashely to finish their scandalous and immature conversations.  

Embarrassed and mortified, Ashley ran off the stage almost as fast as she convinced Blair that she was not worthy. Maybe she learned her lesson and won't try to imitate her betters.

Author's Note :I chose to re-tell the story of the Monkey and the Camel in a modern and more relatable way. In the original story, a monkey was chosen to dance for the king and a camel became envious from all the praise the dancing monkey was receiving. The camel then attempted to imitate the monkey and dance at the party in order to hopefully engage the audience and draw attention to himself. The camel's feet got tangled and he fell face first in front of everyone. Disgusted with this jealous animal, the rest of the party decided to eat his ribs and meat afterwards. I wanted to express the theme "Don't try to ape your betters" in a Gossip Girl setting because I am obsessed with the show! Blair, her house in The Hampton's, her glamorous parties, and her upper-east side friends are all a part of the original TV series. I introduced Lauren and Ashely as new characters, taking the place of  the Monkey and the Camel. Instead of dancing, I changed the act of entertainment to singing. I wanted readers to be able to understand the theme of "don't try to ape your betters" and the theme of jealousy. 

Gossip Girl (Image by Sarina Rose)

Bibliography : The story The Monkey and the Camel came from the Aesop for Children, illustrated by Milo Winter book. (1919). 

Week 2 Reading Diary : Aesop For Children (Winter) Continued

Here are some other stories from Aesop for Children, illustrated by Milo Winter that I enjoyed and took some notes over for my second half of my Reading Diary.


The Fox and the Leopard
I enjoyed this story because it had a great message about how looks are beauty do not always indicate that someone is kind, friendly, sweet, intelligent, or posses positive qualities. This would be another fun story to re-tell in the storytelling section of this class.
"A fine coat is not always an indication of an attractive mind."

The Wolf and the Shepard
This story was short and easy to understand. I enjoyed that the author didn't use a long introduction or take forever to introduce characters, the scene, the plot, the problems, and the resolution.

The Wolf and the Shepard

The Mouse and the Weasel
I am fascinated to see each story in this unit have different animals that interact with an unexpected animal. A weasel would have never crossed my mind if I was brainstorming for possible animals for characters. It could potentially be a strategy to pick an animal based off of its symbolic meaning. I looked up both animals to see if there was any symbolic meaning behind the two, and it was interesting because weasels usually hunt mice. In the story, the weasel did not kill the mouse, instead left him to suffer from eating too much. Interesting...

Mercury and the Woodman
I loved this story! I loved how cleverly the theme "honesty is the best policy" was narrated naturally in the story without trying to hard. Easy to follow, and a happy ending. You can't help but smile for the Woodman who got his axe back. Interesting to have a god appear in the story when this unit isn't focused on greek gods or goddesses. A "guest appearance" or a "character crossover" might be an interesting thing to add. Definitely keeps the audience surprised.

Week 2 Reading Diary : Aesop For Children (Winter)

I choose some of my favorite stories from Aesop for Children, illustrated by Milo Winter, and described some of the things I liked or paid close attention too.

The Oxen and the Wheels 
I loved this story and the theme behind it. I thought it was very interesting that the author made wheels, a non-human object, a huge character role in the story. This story could have been easily told using two "typical" characters, but instead the characters were stretched to animals and objects.

The Plane Tree
This story had an awesome message behind it, "our best blessings are often the least appreciated." I thought the message was very true and I also thought that the way it was portrayed was very interesting. The story had a good use of descriptive words and instead of saying a hot afternoon, the author used "walking in the noonday sun."  To describe the tree, I liked how the author used the phrase "sought the shade of a wide spreading tree to rest" to describe the appearance of the tree.

The Monkey and the Camel
 I loved this story. It is so true about real life. People become envious so easily and so quickly. I could see myself having fun re-telling this story in a high-school setting.

The Envious Camel

The Dog and His Master's Dinner
I felt bad for the dog when he was stopped by the pack of dogs. How could you outrun them when you are cornered you and you couldn't get away from them? I felt sympathy for the poor and faithful pup!


The Dogs and the Hides
I thought this story was going to be different then what actually happened. I had no idea the dogs were going to burst from drinking water. I had to laugh, it was sad but very funny. Stories with amusement and hilarity are often the best.