Week 6 Reading Diary, Continued: African Stories from Lang's Fairy Books

This week's reading is from African Stories from Lang's Fairy Books.
From The Grey Fairy Book by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1900)

Snake from pixabay

Hassebu

•  There are parts of this story that don't add anything for me.  Like when the boy finds his fathers books and reads them.  This seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the story.
• Hassebu does not seem like like to do any work, so why then does he help the woodcutters?  This seems like another type of work. the story doesn't explain why he prefers this work more than the other jobs his mother tried to get him to learn. 
• I like that all of the animals in this tale talk.  I wonder why the scorpion didn't talk. 
• The second Hassebu gave his promise I assumed he would break it, because that's how stories always go. 
• I still don't understand why the King of the snakes would help Hassebu who had just betrayed him.

The Heart of a Monkey

• I like that the shark and monkey become friends and help each other.  I expected the shark to try to trick the Monkey into letting him eat the Monkey. 
• There seems to be a theme of needing parts of animals to cure sick Sultans. 

The Heart of a Monkey: The Washerman's Donkey

•  Never underestimate another creature. The lion underestimated the strength of the donkey's hooves. 
• The donkey is a fool for trusting the lion for a second time. To me this is not a believable part of the story.

Makoma

• I like the idea of getting the strength of the people you defeat.  It makes for an interesting story idea.
• I predict that Makoma is acquire a lot of strength before the end of his story. 
• I wonder why Makoma killed Chin-debou Mau-giri but kept the rest of the giants as servants.

Week 6 Reading Diary: African Stories from Lang's Fairy Books

This week's reading is from African Stories from Lang's Fairy Books.
From The Grey Fairy Book by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1900)

Golden Jackal

Motikatika, 

• I like that this tale reverses the roles, the wife is very difficult at first, and so when the husband is thirsty, he makes equally difficult requests of his wife.
• The baby named Motikatika is surprisingly clever. He consulted his bones, managed to avoid the ogre who would eat him, but the stories always refers to him as a baby.  This doesn't sell the story for me.  Motikatika might be a child, and his is just the culture's way of referring to him

Jackal and Spring

• When the jackal told the rabbit, "If you really want me to give you some more, you must have your paws tied behind you and lie on your back so that I can pour it into your mouth," I expected the jackal to eat the rabbit. The rabbit is very gullible and I am surprised worse didn't happen. 
• The hare gets tricked in the exact same was as the rabbit, i am surprised the animals didn't learn from the previous mistakes. 

Adventures of a Jackal

• I notice a theme between these tales, the Jackal is always the trickster.  Although I do not know why the Jackal made the panther bad shoes, since it did not benefit him at all. 
• The jackal's flaw is that they always want to eat.  The panther always find the Jackal again because the Jackal is always hungry. 

Adventures of Jackal's Eldest Son

• I am enjoying reading the animal tales. Each animal has a distinct and persistent type of personality.  Although the characters been stories aren't the same, the personality traits of a single type of animal is. 
• The jackal gets completely sidetracked from his goal of reaching the bell first.
• Wow, that ending was completely unexpected. I did not expect the Jackal to get crushed to death by a stone. 

Adventures of Younger Son of Jackal

• Once again, it is the jackal's love of food that is his downfall.  These seems to be a theme between the story. 
• Often, although the Jackal is the trickster, the other animals manage to get their fair share, and outsmart the Jackal. It seems the jackal aren't the only animal with wits, but jackals are always the ones who start the mischief. 

Week 5 Review

This week I chose to use an Image from Saturday, February 20th blog post.  I immediately like the image with the 'Bare Feet' and 'Bear Feet.'  I grew up with my dad telling lots of puns.  It really stuck with me, I take every opportunity I can to make bad puns, and will always appreciate other people's bad puns.

Image from wikipedia

Learning Challenge: Find a favorite health/happiness meme - Week 5

Cartoon by John Atkinson

This was the first image on the page, and I was able to relate to it immediately.  I did scroll through all of the Health/Happiness memes to see if there was one I liked better, but there wasn't.

I will often stay up to late, and use coffee in the mornings.  I rarely used to drink coffee, but they have free coffee at the office where I work, which got me into the habit of drinking it almost every morning.

Thoughts about Comments

Every week I have been writing comments on other people introductions and stories, and other people have been commenting on mine.

As far as my introduction goes, the most engaging comments are from people who have something in common with me. When somebody picks a specific topic that I mention interest in, for example baking, and people talking about whether or not they do any cooking and baking I find that interesting.  Finding out the familiarity between myself and other people is always interesting.

As far as story comments go, I really enjoy which specific pieces of my writing people enjoy.  Although it's always nice to know that people like my stories, it's much more helpful to here criticism, which parts of my story doesn't make sense, doesn't include enough detail, rambles on for to long etc. I would much rather read more critical comments that help me improve my writing than praise.  Don't get me wrong, praise is really nice to hear, as long as it's honest.

When commenting on other people's intro, I try to talk about which part of their into captures my interest, or which parts or the other people's lives I can relate too. When I comment on people's stories, I feel like I have been doing a good job since i have been leaving critiques as well as praise.  I could be writing better comments if I reread some of the stories a second time.  A reader will often catch something the second time that they missed on the first.

Comment Bubble - Pixabay

Growth Mindset: Grow-Your-Writing-Style - Week 6

I am trying to see growth in my writing style.  This was done for the story listed in week 5, however because I am on my 6th growth mindset challenge I decided to use the week 6 label, since this will count towards my week 6 extra credit.

This week I decided to use the very first storytelling style that the storytelling assignment listed.  I happened to get 'Five Motifs' which I have not done before.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this storytelling style, the goal is to pick five objects, characters, settings, etc. and create my own story around it.

If you are interested to see the result, please read my story called Thieves in the Night. 

Fountain Pen - Wikipedia Article

Week 5 Storytelling : Thieves in the Night

Arabian Nights - By Milo Winter

Thieves in the Night

Once upon a time, there lived a handsome prince and a beautiful princess in a palace far far away.  The palace was made up of the most beautiful gems and jewels any person could imagine.  The window panes were made of diamond, and the gilded walls and the marble floors danced with light when the sunlight peeked through the windows.

The palace spent a week in Africa were me and my fellows first laid eyes on the riches and wonder.  All those riches and jewels are exactly the kind of thing we had been eyeing. The second we laid eyes on it, we started making plans.  We could probably have filled a whole bag full of jewels and nobody would even have noticed that they were gone.  Before we were able to complete our plan, the palace vanished.  The legend told of a genie, a magician and a princess.

A prince fell madly in love with a beautiful princess.  The prince came from a very wealthy family, and he was convinced that the princess was so beautiful, that he would only be worthy of her if he used every last ounce of his gold for her.   He spend the next fifteen years building a palace, working and laboring with his own hands, as well as making his slaved labor day and night on the palace.  One the 365th day of the 15th year, he was final done.  We went up to the Sultan and asked for the princess's hand in marriage.  Impressed by the dedication and splendor that the prince showed, he agreed and the two were happily married for the rest of their days, living in splendor.

My personal opinion is that the story has been elaborated during the telling.  There is no way a man could build a palace of such splendor in 15 years, much less a lifetime.  I had also never believed in magic until I saw the palace appear, and then disappear a week later.  We kept our ears open for rumors of the palace, until finally one day we heard that it moved to China.  We did not hesitate for an instance, we packed up our bags and moved to China.

My band of thieves gathered around the palace.  We knew we needed to scout out the place, figure out the guard patterns etc.  before we could actually steel anything.  We believed this process would take weeks of time.  On our first day of scouting out the palace, we did not see a single guard.  We could not believe our eyes, no palace was ever left completely unguarded. Three more days we surveyed the palace to be sure, and three more days we saw nobody protected the palace.  On the fourth day, we entered the palace, found the treasure room, and left with all we could carry. We found many things in the treasure room, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pears, gold, and so much more.  We also found a very old looking dingy lamp, which we disregarded in an instance, skipping over it to look at the rest of the treasure.

We praised our luck as we left the palace, feeling fortunate to have come out with such a successful score.  It was morning by the time we went to a quiet  place and started counting our money.  As we were doing this, the room around us suddenly blurred, as as if by magic.  We found ourselves back in the palace we had just left, kneeling in front of the prince of the castle, Aladdin, and his princess.  Aladdin held the lamp, and beside him floated what could only be a genie.

Finally we understood why the palace had no guards.  The palace didn't need any guards, because Aladdin had the power to summon up anything he needed from his genie.  I knelt to the floor and begged forgiveness, promising to mend the error of my ways.  I knew what happened to thieves, and it was not a fate I wanted to share with my friends.  Aladdin would not yield, wanting to set an example for people who would steal from him in the future.  He spoke a command to the genie, speaking a sentence which I knew was the last one I would ever hear.  Know this, keep your greed in check because no amount of jewels and money is worth the price of your own life.


Authors Note:
Everyone is familiar with the Disney Movie Aladdin.  The story is The Arabian Nights, however, is quite different than the childhood tale most of us grew up with.  I wanted to tell yet another, third retelling of the story, taking five different Motifs from the original story and wrote my own plot.  I chose The Jeweled palace as the setting, Aladdin, Genie, and the princess as the characters, and the lamp as my artifact.  Together, these are five different things from the original story.

The Arabian Nights includes many stories inside stories, and sometime even stories inside stories inside stories.  Because of this, I decided to include a brief summary of the original as a story within my story.  The tale is based on the rumors that the people have been hearing, so it's a fabrication, a slightly different version of what actually happened.

Bibliography: 
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).