Reading Notes: African Stories from Lang's Fairy Books, Part A

Hi!

Let me just say that I really enjoyed this unit! One of the things that I have liked the least from other readings is how they aren't very just. The bad guy keeps winning. So, reading these stories and getting to see the bad guy lose at the end of most of them was so refreshing.

I also liked that in the stories about the Jackals some characters overlapped, like the hedge hog and the greyhound. Especially since it gave more meaning to the actions in the later stories by creating a more complex backstory than I have seen in other readings. This isn’t something that is easily recreated in a story for my blog just because there isn’t a guarantee that anyone reading the story has read any of the other stories and putting two plots inside one story would be a lot for a blog post.

For a story this week it would be interesting to see what could be done with the first story about Motikatika. I think that I would probably stick to my general theme of making things less gruesome. So, I could make it about two kids at school evading a bully, or people trying not to get caught by the cops. In those situations, the bully or the cop would be the ogre and the people would be the mom and the baby. The bully would catch hold of a kid and ask for his lunch money and the kid would offer to find someone else to give him lunch money. The cop would arrest someone for a crime, and instead the person offers to turn in someone else but is actually framing them.

I think that both of those stories would be fun to write and could make for interesting reads. I think that the one that I am more knowledgeable about would be the one with the bully, making it easier; however, because of my lack of experience the cop story could be exciting to write. We’ll see when Thursday gets here!

Bibliography

Fairy Books by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1903)

Photo: A Series of Anatomical Plates The Structure of the Different Parts of The Human Body. by Jones Quain, M.D.Published in 1854. PD-1923

Comments

Introduction

Hello! My name is Cat and although this will be a blog about mythology and folklore, today I want to tell you all a little bit about myself and my summer. So, to start off I am a civil engineering student here at the University of Oklahoma. I will be graduating in December, but I will be staying on for another year to complete my master’s degree, also in civil engineering but with a focus on structural engineering. Civil engineering includes the design of buildings, infrastructure, water supply systems, waste water treatment systems, and traffic control systems to name a few. Over this summer I had the opportunity to work as an intern for a civil engineering company and learned a lot from the experience. I learned to design pump stations, outline drainage areas, how to do the runoff calculations for inlets, culverts and drainage ditches, and a bunch of stuff about low impact development, but most importantly I learned that I don’t like doing any of those things....

Reading Notes: Japanese Mythology, Part B

Hi there! Previously I had read the first half of the Japanese Mythology Unit. I liked the stories and was interested to see how Yamato’s adventures turned out. So, for this reading I decided to finish up the unit. This time though, I was not as fond of Yamato’s stories as I was of the other stories in the unit. Yamato treated his poor wife Tacibana so badly. It really made me sad even though it made for a good story. I wish that at least in the end Tacibana would have just abandoned Yamato, but instead she sacrificed herself for him. Like I have said in many other posts, I feel like women are just really getting the short end of the stick in so many of these stories. The few instances were women don’t get taken advantage of it seems like they are generally portrayed as mean, evil, or nasty in some way. What a horrible dichotomy. Evil or victim. Of the other stories I read for this unit I enjoyed “The Jewel of Heart’s Desire” the most. Although it played into th...

Feedback Strategies

Hello, This week I learned more about feedback, and specifically ways to give better feedback. Here I would like to share with you some of the articles I read and what I found useful or interesting. "How To Give Students Specific Feedback That Actually Helps Them Learn" gave some general advice on what kinds of feedback should be given to help others. This included things that for the most part I had heard, such as making it goal oriented, actionable, and specific. Although this is good advice, it wasn't really things I hadn't heard before. Looking over at " Three Simple Frameworks for Feedback " I saw something that I wasn't really expecting. This article took some of the same ideas as "How To Give Students Specific Feedback That Actually Helps Them Learn" and provided specific tools (diagrams to be filled out, and phrases) that can help people put those ideas into action easily. I would definitely recommend taking a look at the ch...

Mythology Blog

Search This Blog