Friday, September 29, 2017

Folktales from Around the World: Compilations

For our Co-op last semester, we were learning about the seven continents and the students are giving presentations of their own choosing. My son decided to focus on folktales from each continent and explore story telling. Here are some of the compilations we found that covered several continents and/or story telling in general.

AROUND THE WORLD

Tuck-me-in tales: bedtime stories from around the world by MacDonald, Margaret Read. A cute collection of tales great for little children.

When the world was young : creation and pourquois tales / retold by Margaret Mayo ; illustrated by Louise Brierley. A Polynesian tale featuring Maui, and an Australian tale help make this collection unique.

Check out this series of books delving into the origin of folktales: Origin of Folktales from Around the World. For example, Cinderella - and Other Girls Who Lost Their Slippers.

Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls by Jane Yolen brings balance to the world of folktales by highlighting female protagonists. Each tale is a few pages long. Does Jane Yolen ever stop? I guess not! She's the author of several of our favorite picture books--too many to list--but you may be most familiar with How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight.

Twenty Tellable Tales: Audience Participation Tales for the Beginning Story Teller by Margaret Read MacDonald is designed for telling to elementary-aged students. Most of the stories are from North America and each is accompanied by tips for telling and great notes on where these stories come from.

How & Why Stories: World Tales Kids Can Read & Tell by Martha Hamilton & Mitch Weiss collects stories from all over the world. Each story is told in a couple of pages, illustrated, and clearly tells what culture it is from, non-fiction facts related to the story, and tips for telling the story. A map near the beginning of the book shows the origin of all the stories. Perfect for elementary students.

Stories in my Pocket: Tales Kids Can Tell by Martha Hamilton & Mitch Weiss. I just realized this is the same author team as the one above. Ha! No wonder it's a good book. This one is more advanced, with many more detailed notes about how to give the stories life, including hand gestures, use of voice, and emphasis on certain words. I love how it is laid out in two columns, with a line from the story on the left side of the page and tips for how to tell it on the right. The stories are arranged from easiest to most challenging and then followed up by back matter that goes even further into the art of storytelling and how to foster it.

Free Scripts Based on Children's Books

Tell it Together: Foulproof Scripts for Story Theatre by Barnara McBride-Smith provides funny scripts of folktales and myths at an upper-elementary to middle school level. Greek myths, Irish, Norwegian, and even Twelfth Night.

Frantic Frogs and other Fractured Folktales for Readers Theatre by Anthony D. Fredericks is exactly as funny as it sounds. I'd say this is more for middle school students, due to the type of humor and the lengthy paragraphs of text each actor reads.

This is the final Folktale post (sad!). Join my Reader's Club to keep up with posts like these.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Folktales from Around the World: Asia

For our Co-op last semester, we were learning about the seven continents and the students are giving presentations of their own choosing. My son decided to focus on folktales from each continent and explore story telling. For Asia he chose Monkey: A Trickster Tale from India. For our class we enjoyed a tale featuring tiny samurai from Tuck-me-in tales: bedtime stories from around the world.

ASIA
Monkey: A Trickster Tale from India by Gerald McDermott
The monkey and the crocodile : a Jataka tale from India by Paul Galdone. Tells the same tale as Gerald McDermott; both are good renditions with the McDermott book being slightly shorter.

Japanese Fairy-Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki is available online for free from Project Gutenberg.

Omusumi Kororin: Follow this link for a script of a traditional Japanese tale about a man who finds his way into the world of mice, where he is rewarded for being kind. This tale parallels the structure of the European fairytale "Diamonds and Toads" where a good person is rewarded and then a bad person attempts to get the reward but fails. Watch it on youtube here.

No Dinner! : The Story of the Old Woman and the Pumpkin by Jessica Souhami. An Indian/Asian folktale of an old woman who tricks wolf, bear, and tiger out of eating her.

The dragon's tale: and other animal fables of the Chinese zodiac by Demi. Each tale is a paragraph or two on its own page, told in a straight-forward manner.

Tikki Tikki Tembo / retold by Arlene Mosel. Illustrated by Blair Lent. A funny Chinese legend tells why children have short names; when two boys fall down the well, the boy with the longer name must wait longer to be rescued. The children laughed each time I had to read the silly long name in the book.

Tanuki's gift : a Japanese tale  by Tim Myers ; pictures by R.G. Roth. An adorable tale where a priest befriends a badger, then asks the badger for money to pay his way into heaven -- instead, the priest learns that it is the badger's friendship that actually matters to him the most.

The hunter : a Chinese folktale retold by Mary Casanova ; illustrations by Ed Young. A hunter earns the ability to understand animals, under threat that he can never give away the secret. In order to save his village from a flood, he chooses to give away the secret and allow himself to be turned to stone. The villagers are saved but regret making him explain himself.

The great race: an Indonesian trickster tale by Author: Scott, Nathan Kumar, is a little bit like the tortoise and the hare, with a trickster twist at the end.

 The gift of the Crocodile: a Cinderella story by Judy Sierra  (Author), Reynold Ruffins (Illustrator). A Cinderella tale from the spice islands (Columbus' original destination). This tale also shares aspects of the "Diamonds and Toads" motif where the good sister is rewarded (with a nice clothes) and the bad sister is punished when she tries to copy her (with leech-filled clothing). This was a favorite of all my kids and led us to learn about mangrove forests.

I hope you like Cinderella, because there are a few dozen more:
The Golden Sandal: a Middle East Cinderella
The Korean Cinderella
Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story From China

Filipino Popular Tales 1921, available from project gutenberg. Short and simply told tales with character.

Indian Fairytales by Joseph Jacob, 1892, available online from project gutenberg. The language is a bit stilted or "classic" and assumes a bit of knowledge of Buddism, but the stories are otherwise short and straightforward.

Note that The Jungle Book is set is the Indian jungle.

The original Arabian Nights Entertainment by Andrew Lang can be found online on the gutenberg project.

Stay tuned for World Compilations! Join my Reader's Club to keep up with posts like these and other content.