The Telling and Retelling of Tales
Once students have created their own construction rubric for a fairy tale, they will begin looking at different, more recent variations on the fairy tale. For instance, they will consider how point of view is important in a fairy tale.
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! is an account of what happened from the viewpoint of Alexander T. Wolf (Al to his friends). In this retelling of the classic, Al has a terrible cold and while baking a cake for granny, runs out of sugar. So he goes to visit his neighbor to borrow some sugar. The neighbor's house is made of straw, and because it is so weak the door falls in when he knocks on it. Just then, the wolf sneezes and knocks the whole house over. The pig is in the rubble, dead, and the wolf can't let a ham dinner go to waste, so he eats the pig. Still in need of a cup of sugar, Al visits the next neighbor. The second pig tells the wolf to go away because he is shaving. Al sneezes again and finds the second pig dead, so again he cannot let a ham dinner go to waste. The third neighbor tells Al to go away, and then insults his grandmother. Al becomes outraged and has another sneezing fit, just as the cops show up. He claims the media jazzed up the story and he was framed.
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! is told from the point of view of the wolf, and leaves the viewer with a very different idea about what happened that day. Students will focus on point of view and how the choice of narrator can affect a story. We will talk about rumors, and ask whether there have been times that students can recall hearing two different sides of the same story. We will talk about how important it is to get your facts straight, and how two people's points of view can differ so drastically. If more materials are necessary, Cinderella's Stepsister and Cinderella: the Untold Story illustrates this for Cinderella, and the animated film Hoodwinked does the same for Little Red Riding Hood. Students will set up a mock trial to defend both the pigs and the wolf in order to stress the importance of point of view.
Lesson Plan Two
Objectives
Students will understand how point of view can affect the telling and outcome of a story. Students will understand and be able to retell a story from a different character's point of view. Students will be able to combine points of view to reconstruct an idea about what actually happened, taking into account both sides.
Materials
Students will read Grimm's The Three Little Pigs and Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Class copies of these two books should be available. Also, information about court cases should be available, and tables to set up as a courtroom.
Do Now
Think about the standard version of The Three Little Pigs. If the wolf had a chance to give his side of the story, what do you think his excuse might be for his behavior? Why?
Procedure
As a class we will discuss their answers to the do now, brainstorming possible reasons for the wolf's behavior. Next we will read aloud The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. I will ask for student volunteers to get up and act out each part. Once we have read the story students will each be assigned a position in the court by randomly selecting a card. The available positions will include a judge, jury members, prosecution and defense teams, the wolf, and each of the three pigs. The class will then be divided up into a courtroom, and each group will need to support their side. The wolf will be suing the pigs for libel and slander — giving him a bad name. The pigs will be counter suing for the cost of their destroyed property. The students will compile their cases and will need to coach their party in order to convince the judge and the jurors. The trial process may take a few class periods, depending on how long you see the students.
Closure
In closing, the jurors will deliberate and reach a verdict. We will discuss point of view as a class. Students will be given two homework assignments throughout the trial. First, in writing they should think of a time when they heard a story from two different points of view: how did the points of view differ, which did they assume was the more accurate, and why? The second assignment will be to take a fairy tale they know or have read in this class and retell it from another point of view.
Assessment
Students will be graded based on their participation and homework assignments.
Students will read different versions of Cinderella. There are thousands of them. I have chosen a few versions which have origins in other countries. Included in the works referenced is a traditional version, along with a Russian, Vietnamese and African version. There are similar themes in stories which were written across the world from each other: how is this possible? It will be important for students to think about how stories that are so similar could have been written in places that had no contact with each other. How did fairy tales become so universal? I would like students to offer their own explanation of why similar stories might have come to be told across the globe.
John Steptoe's Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters: An African Fairy Tale is about two sisters, one of whom is very jealous of the other because everyone talks about how kind she is. One sister threatens the other that when she is queen she will make the other a servant. The king is trying to choose a wife and Mufaro sends both of his daughters, not knowing the relationship between them. The evil sister meets people who try to help her on her journey to the city, but she ignores their advice and is rude to them, repeating that she will soon be the queen. The good sister waits until the next morning to leave with her father and encounters the same people as her sister, but she is kind to them. In the morning she finds her sister, who has been scared away from the king by a six-headed snake. The good sister goes to see the king, who seems to be a snake that she had made friends with in her garden. The snake then turns into the king and explains that he was all of the people she had run into on her journey. He observed how she interacted with all of them. He asks her to be his wife. The evil sister becomes a servant in the new queen's house. The illustrations in Steptoe's version are incredible works of art, in terms of value and crosshatching. They are extremely realistic and breathtaking.
Domitila: A Cinderella Tale from the Mexican Tradition is about a girl whose mother tells her, "Do every task with care, and always add a generous dash of love." Domitila's family are leather-makers creating purses, sandals, etc. After a while her mother gets very sick and Domitila must go to work as a cook in the Governor's mansion. One day she is asked to cook for the grandmother and her grandson. Domitila cooks nopales, which the grandson tells her are not fit for royalty to eat. The grandmother convinces him to try them and he is amazed at how good they taste and eats every bit from his plate. Domitila must return home because her mother's illness has worsened, and during her journey home Domitila's mother passes away. Her mother comes back to her as a ghost and reminds Domitila of the importance of adding love to things. The grandson wants to talk to Domitila about her cooking. He finds a piece of leather that she has tooled, and goes in search of the girl who carved the leather piece. He searches Hidalgo for her and meets a woman named Malvina on his way. She realizes what he is up to and points him in the wrong direction. In the meantime Malvina marries Domitila's father and puts Domitila to work. When the grandson comes in search of Domitila, she plans to impose her daughter upon him. Instead, the townspeople lead him to Domitila, who is at her mother's grave. She becomes his wife and Malvina and her daughter flee Hidalgo. The Mexican tale has different morals on each page, surrounding the text.
Different versions of each fairy tale can be found in different countries. If you feel that versions from other countries would be more appropriate for your class, In the Land of the Small Dragon is a good Vietnamese version, and Baba Yaga and Vasilis the Brave is a good Russian version. There are two main reasons why it is possible that tales with similar characters and themes could exist in different countries. There may be themes that are so universal throughout human life that inevitably each culture has written a story with a similar plot and moral. The other school of thought is that a story was told in one culture and then through migration, trade routes, or oral tradition carried on to another culture. Either of these options is a viable one, and whatever the truth is it remains unknown. Also, one explanation may be valid for some cases but not for all. It is incredible how similar the stories are between cultures.
Besides point of view, I would like students to read "updated" versions of fairy tales. Cinder-elly and Kellogg's The Three Little Pigs (like Scieszka's) are set in present times, which I think will appeal to my students. This technique incorporates their culture into stories that can sometimes seem archaic.
Frances Minter's Cinder-elly stars a little girl who is forced to do housework while her sisters play video games and watch television. The story is told in rhyme and is meant to be sung as a rap song. Cinder-elly's older sisters get dressed up to go to the huge school basketball game but the family can't afford to buy new clothes for Cinder-elly too, so she must stay at home. The night of the game her godmother appears and gives her beautiful clothes and a bike to get to the game, but warns that she must be home by ten o'clock. At the game, Cinder-elly catches a ball which has flown into the stands, and as she passes it back down to Prince Charming he asks her to go out for pizza. He says he'll meet her after he's finished showering, but it is too late and she must go home. However, she leaves a glass sneaker behind. Prince makes a flyer looking for the girl who wore the glass sneaker in an attempt to find her. Both of her sisters try on the shoe with no luck. Then she tries on the shoe and it is a perfect fit. Godmother shows up to scold the two older sisters, and then they all live happily ever after.
I would like to try and find a recorded version of this rap if one exists, or create one for my students. Considering all these versions of Cinderella at once, I would like to discuss with students the differences among the characters who help Cinderella get to the ball (or game, or whatever), and also the resolutions of each story. What other objects could be used in place of the glass slipper? Who is the evil figure that keeps Cinderella from her just reward?
Steven Kellog's The Three Little Pigs is fairly similar to the Grimm fairy tale, with a few modern day updates. The mother of the three pigs starts a waffle cart, which she uses to support the boys and then hands down to them when she retires to the Land of Pasta. In this tale the pigs take on many more human qualities than in Grimm. Tempo the wolf shows up and instead of waffles from the waffle cart, he wants to dine on the three operators of the cart. The pigs go running for their houses. The wolf blows down the straw and wood houses, but the two pigs who live there escape to the brick house. Mother comes back to save the day. After the wolf has tried and tried to blow the brick house down, he eventually tries a new strategy, flying up and climbing in through the chimney; waiting for him at the bottom is the waffle maker, which irons the badness out of him. He spends the rest of his time in the Land of Pasta and the pigs are prosperous and have large families, to the delight of mother pig. The illustrations in this book are fantastic, from the details of the pigs right down to the wolf's T-shirt, which says, "Say YES to THUGS".
I would like to raise the following questions with the students: How do you feel about the characters taking on more human qualities? What makes this story different from the previous version of The Three Little Pigs? What does Kellogg change about the original story? How is this resolution different? How does this version compare to the version told by the wolf himself? Students will be challenged to update their own fairy tale of choice.
Lesson Plan Three
Objectives
Students will learn about poetry through rhyming and rhythm and will make text to world connections. They will understand that fairy tale characters are universal and are still sung and written about today. Students will be able to transform a fairy tale into a rap.
Do Now
Students will listen to a few modern/current songs which tell stories. I would like to use songs which are popular while I am teaching the class, however a classic example I Shot the Sheriff by Bob Marley, where a good force and a bad force is present. They will be asked to identify possible fairy tale elements in them. Songs which tell a story will be most effective, so that students can hopefully identify characters, conflict and resolution.
Procedure
We will discuss how the songs parallel fairy tales. Students will contribute other songs which also fit into this rubric. They will be encouraged to bring in songs for us to listen to throughout the process. As a class we will read Cinderelly and discuss how it differs from the Grimm Cinderella. Students will then be challenged to recreate a fairy tale in rap or poem form. We will discuss the importance of rhythm and rhyming.
Closure
We will discuss whether or not updating fairy tales changes their meaning or universality.
Assessment
Students will present, either through rap or reading, their new fairy tales. Students will be graded on both their presentation and their written product, which will need to include an illustration based on the Molly Bang principles we've been discussing.
In Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood a little girl in a red hood is sent on a journey to bring her sick grandmother griddle cakes. Along the way she meets a wolf and tells him that she is going to visit her grandmother. The wolf says he will go there too, and races her. Little Red Riding Hood takes the longest path and collects flowers along the way. When she arrives at grandmother's house grandmother invites her in, except her grandmother is really the wolf who's eaten her grandmother. Little Red Riding Hood keeps talking about how large grandma's features are until she gets to grandma's teeth which are "All the better to eat you up!" Little Red Riding Hood is then gobbled up.
A quick note if you are teaching this tale: when Red Riding Hood gets to grandma's Perrault writes, "Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and went to lie down in the bed." Because of the wording, students may have quite a reaction to this sentence. Perrault includes a moral at the end of his fairy tales, which is unlike that of any other author. The moral here is that pretty girls should never talk to strangers, or wolves may eat them, and wolves are not even the most dangerous beasts of all. His typical moral is a tongue in cheek look at social habits, especially libertine behavior, and is usually more entertaining than cautionary. I would like to use Perrault as a jumping off point to engage the students in a discussion about the morals that are drawn in didactic fiction, how they might be inferred from tales where they are not explicit, why the author might make a point of including them, and how much we are actually expected to heed such warnings. Perrault's point, for example, is that girls don't meet many wolves nowadays, but they do meet a lot of men who act like wolves, with less drastic though still serious consequences. But that's not his whole point; the lingering joke is that of course his readers know this already, and are likely to behave according to their own wishes regardless of whether they've read Perrault's "moral" or not.
We will also look at Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes and Aesop's fables, where the morals change drastically. Perrault's morals are cautionary but funny. Dahl's morals are outlandish but very entertaining twists on the original classic fairy tales. Aesop's morals are very straightforward advice to live your life by, though some of them are outdated. I would like the students to have a discussion about morals, asking them if they feel that morals are treated the same way in entertainment today.
Once students have collected all of this information about writing and illustrating a fairy tale, they will be challenged to create their own fairy tale. There will be a huge class library available to the students. Before writing their own tales each student will read a fairy tale from the class library and present it to the class, explaining how it uses the elements we have laid out. They will have three different options: creating a brand new fairy tale, retelling an old fairy tale from a new point of view, or updating an old fairy tale for modern times. Through the exercises we have completed as a class, they will already have a lot of experience with this process. I will encourage them to create their own original tale. Students will be placed in pairs, a strong author with a strong illustrator. They will be given the same column sheet that they filled out for each fairy tale to help them begin thinking about their own fairy tale. They will also be given character development worksheets to help them brainstorm about their new characters. Students will write the concept of the story together, and then refine the language.
Students will also choose how they would like to illustrate their fairy tale. They will use a story board to break down the page layouts, and as a guide for what information will be included on each pair of two-pages. Students will create their book as though it [were] going to be published, including an "about the author" and a dedication. This will be their final project. As a culminating activity students will take their books to neighboring elementary schools and read them to students in the lower grades.
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