Tales from around the world

In the African folk tales, the stories reflect the culture where animals abound; consequently, the monkey, elephant, giraffe, lion, zebra, crocodile, and rhinoceros appear frequently along with a wide variety of birds such as the ostrich, the secretary bird, and the eagle. The animals and birds take on human characteristics of greed, jealousy, honesty, loneliness, etc. Through their behavior, many valuable lessons are learned. Also, the surroundings in which the tales take place reveal the vastness of the land and educate the reader about the climate, such as the dry season when it hasn't rained for several years, or the rainy season when the hills are slick with mud. The acacia trees swaying in a gentle breeze, muddy streams that are home to fish, hippos and crocodiles, moss covered rocks, and giant ant hills that serve as a "back scratcher" for huge elephants, give the reader a sense of the variety of life in this parched or lush land in this part of the world.
Folk tales and myths serve as a means of handing down traditions and customs from one generation to the next. The storytelling tradition has thrived for generations because of the absence of printed material. Folk tales prepare young people for life, as there are many lessons to be learned from the tales. Because of the history of this large continent, which includes the forceful transplanting of the people into slavery on other continents, many of the same folk tales exist in North America, South America, and the West Indies. These are told with little variation, for the tales were spread by word of mouth and were kept among the African population. In addition to the folk tales, there are myths, legends, many proverbs, tongue twisters, and riddles. In the African folk tales, the stories reflect the culture where animals abound; consequently, the monkey, elephant, giraffe, lion, zebra, crocodile, and rhinoceros appear frequently along with a wide variety of birds such as the ostrich, the secretary bird, and the eagle. The animals and birds take on human characteristics of greed, jealousy, honesty, loneliness, etc.

In Latin American folktales, as in folktales throughout the world, children of Latin decent will be introduced to characters who reflect their own diverse culture. All  children need strong role models to give them a broader perspective and validate their experiences. These three Latin American tales are authentic connections to their lives. This validation is important not only for Latino children, but to help individuals from all cultures enjoy and learn from the Latino experience.

Folktales evolved over the centuries from storytelling. The oral tradition offered entertainment, recounted history, and explained the unexplainable. Additionally, morals and the social values of a culture could be taught in a subtle manner allowing the listener to draw his or her own conclusions. The mysterious, miraculous, and the unknown engage even the youngest listeners. Magical forces enable the heroes and heroines to combat injustice and evil. Characters and their accompanying problems, whether animals or human, frequently are depicted as everyday beings found in all societies. Participants, therefore, can freely relate to the adventures and enjoy the world of fantasy while stimulating their imagination.

The folktales found in this unit are included because the characters are, for the most part, ordinary people or animals. These characters are going about their daily lives when the unexpected occurs or mistakes are made. These mistakes and occurrences are easily identifiable by the students, allowing them to make inferences about the outcomes.

 The Asian Tales originated with the aim of allowing children and parents to easily experience the culture, heritage, and fantastic old-fashioned story-telling of Asian folk and fairy tales.

With lush stylised illustrations and a strong narrative arc, kids will enjoy these stories and be prompted to seek out fairy tale universes and characters of Asian values.

Asian Tales features:
- Voice-recording function for parents to narrate the story, to transform this into a personalised storybook for every child.
- Voice-recording also lets your child practice reading out loud, and boost confidence by hearing their voices become part of the app.
- "Listen to story" option has voice-over narration in a child's voice, for a story told by one child to another.
- Large fonts for children to read independently.

 Perennial favourites of Australian children's literature include Norman Lindsay's ''The Magic Pudding'', Ethel Pedley's ''Dot and the Kangaroo'', May Gibbs' ''Snugglepot and Cuddlepie]]'', and more. These  classic works employ [[Anthropomorphism]] to bring alive the creatures of the [[Australian bush]], thus Bunyip Bluegum of ''The Magic Pudding'' is a koala who leaves his tree in search of adventure, while  Dot of ''Dot and the kangaroo'' is a little girl lost in the bush, who befriends a group of [[marsupials]]. May Gibbs  crafted a story of protagonists modelled on the appearance of young Eucalyptus ([[gum tree]]) nuts and pitted these ''gumnut babies'', [[Snugglepot and Cuddlepie]], against the antagonist [[Banksia|Banksia men]]. Gibbs' influence has lasted through the generations - contemporary children's author [[Ursula Dubosarsky]] has cited "Snugglepot and Cuddlepie" as one of her favourite books.

Jackie French, widely described as Australia's most popular children's author, has written about 170 books, including two Children's Book of the Year Award winners. One of them, the critically acclaimed ''Hitler's Daughter'' (1999), is a "what if?" story that explores mind-provoking issues about what would have happened if Adolf Hitler had had a daughter.
Paul Jennings (Australian author)is a prolific writer of contemporary Australian fiction for young people whose career began with 1985's collection of short stories ''Unreal!'' and whose popular works include ''Round The Twist'' which was adapted for television.

Here I chose an example of Australian folktales I liked most.

Narahdarn the bat

Narahdarn, the bat, wanted honey. He watched until he saw a Wurranunnah, or bee, alight. He caught it, stuck a white feather between its hind legs, let it go and followed it. He knew he could see the white feather, and so follow the bee to its nest. He ordered his two wives, of the Bilber tribe, to follow him with wirrees to carry home the honey in. Night came on and Wurranunnah the bee had not reached home. Narahdarn caught him, imprisoned him under bark, and kept him safely there until next morning. When it was light enough to see, Narahdarn let the bee go again, and followed him to his nest, in a gunnyanny tree. Marking the tree with his comebo that he might know it again, he returned to hurry on his wives who were some way behind. He wanted them to come on, climb the tree, and chop out the honey. When they reached the marked tree one of the women climbed up. She called out to Narahdarn that the honey was in a split in the tree. He called back to her to put her hand in and get it out. She put her arm in, but found she could not get it out again. Narahdarn climbed up to help her, but found when he reached her that the only way to free her was to cut off her arm. This he did before she had time to realise what he was going to do, and protest. So great was the shock to her that she died instantly. Narahdarn carried down her lifeless body and commanded her sister, his other wife, to go up, chop out the arm, and get the honey. She protested, declaring the bees would have taken the honey away by now.

"Not so," he said; "go at once."

Every excuse she could think of, to save herself, she made. But her excuses were in vain, and Narahdarn only became furious with her for making them, and, brandishing his boondi, drove her up the tree. She managed to get her arm in beside her sister's, but there it stuck and she could not move it. Narahdarn, who was watching her, saw what had happened and followed her up the tree. Finding he could not pull her arm out, in spite of her cries, he chopped it off, as he had done her sister's. After one shriek, as he drove his comebo through her arm, she was silent. He said, "Come down, and I will chop out the bees' nest." But she did not answer him, and he saw that she too was dead. Then he was frightened, and climbed quickly down the gunnyanny tree; taking her body to the ground with him, he laid it beside her sister's, and quickly he hurried from the spot, taking no further thought of the honey. As he neared his camp, two little sisters of his wives ran out to meet him, thinking their sisters would be with him, and that they would give them a taste of the honey they knew they had gone out to get. But to their surprise Narahdarn came alone, and as he drew near to them they saw his arms were covered with blood. And his face had a fierce look on it, which frightened them from even asking where their sisters were. They ran and told their mother that Narahdarn had returned alone, that he looked fierce and angry, also his arms were covered with blood. Out went the mother of the Bilbers, and she said, "Where are my daughters, Narahdarn? Forth went they this morning to bring home the honey you found. You come back alone. You bring no honey. Your look is fierce, as of one who fights, and your arms are covered with blood. Tell me, I say, where are my daughters?"

"Ask me not, Bilber. Ask Wurranunnah the bee, he may know. Narahdarn the bat knows nothing." And he wrapped himself in a silence which no questioning could pierce. Leaving him there, before his camp, the mother of the Bilbers returned to her dardurr and told her tribe that her daughters were gone, and Narahdarn, their husband, would tell her nothing of them. But she felt sure he knew their fate, and certain she was that he had some tale to tell, for his arms were covered with blood.

The chief of her tribe listened to her. When she had finished and begun to wail for her daughters, whom she thought she would see no more, he said, "Mother of the Bilbers, your daughters shall be avenged if aught has happened to them at the hands of Narahdarn. Fresh are his tracks, and the young men of your tribe shall follow whence they have come, and finding what Narahdarn has done, swiftly shall they return. Then shall we hold a corrobboree, and if your daughters fell at his hand Narahdarn shall be punished."

The mother of the Bilbers said: "Well have you spoken, oh my relation. Now speed ye the young men lest the rain fall or the dust blow and the tracks be lost." Then forth went the fleetest footed and the keenest eyed of the young men of the tribe. Ere long, back they came to the camp with the news of the fate of the Bilbers.

That night was the corrobboree held. The women sat round in a half-circle, and chanted a monotonous chant, keeping time by hitting, some of them, two boomerangs together, and others beating their rolled up opossum rugs.

Big fires were lit on the edge of the scrub, throwing light on the dancers as they came dancing out from their camps, painted in all manner of designs, waywahs round their waists, tufts of feathers in their hair, and carrying in their hands painted wands. Heading the procession as the men filed out from the scrub into a cleared space in front of the women, came Narahdarn. The light of the fires lit up the tree tops, the dark balahs showed out in fantastic shapes, and weird indeed was the scene as slowly the men danced round; louder clicked the boomerangs and louder grew the chanting of the women; higher were the fires piled, until the flames shot their coloured tongues round the trunks of the trees and high into the air. One fire was bigger than all, and towards it the dancers edged Narahdarn; then the voice of the mother of the Bilbers shrieked in the chanting, high above that of the other women. As Narahdarn turned from the fire to dance back he found a wall of men confronting him. These quickly seized him and hurled him into the madly-leaping fire before him, where he perished in the flames. And so were the Bilbers avenged.

Children’s literature

Children's literature (also called juvenile literature) consists of the books, stories, and poems which are enjoyed by or targeted primarily at children. Modern children's literature is classified in different ways, including by genre or the intended age of the reader.

Children's literature has its roots in the stories and songs that adults told their children before publishing existed, as part of the wider oral tradition. Because of this it can be difficult to track the development of early stories. Even since widespread printing, many classic tales were originally created for adults and have been adapted for a younger audience. Although originally children's literature was often a re-writing of other forms, since the 1400s there has been much literature aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. To some extent the nature of children's fiction, and the divide between older children's and adult fiction became blurred as time went by and tales appealing to both adult and child had substantial commercial success.

Children's literature by genre

 Children's literature can be divided a number ways. Two useful divisions are genre and intended age of the reader.
A literary genre is a category of literary composition. Genres may be determined by technique, tone, content, or length.

The Grimm Brothers

 Jakob Karl Grimm was born on January 4, 1785, in Hanau, Germany. His brother, Wilhelm Karl Grimm, was born on February 24 of the following year. They were the oldest surviving sons of Philipp Grimm, a lawyer who served as Hanau's town clerk. As small children they spent most of their time together; aside from a brief period of living apart, they were to remain together for the rest of their lives. Their even-tempered personalities made it easy for them to work together on projects. The main difference in their personalities seems to have been that Jakob, the healthier of the two, had more taste for research work, and it was he who worked out most of their theories of language and grammar. Wilhelm was physically weaker but was a somewhat warmer person and more interested in music and literature. He was responsible for the pleasant style of their collection of fairy tales.

The Grimm Brothers’ first collection of folktales was not published during their lifetime. It was a manuscript containing 53 stories, some written out in detail, others sketched in brief outline form. In December 1810 they submitted this collection to Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim for inclusion in a planned third volume to their successful collection of folk poetry entitled Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn, 3 volumes, 1806, 1808, 1808), which was to be dedicated to folktales. This fairy-tale volume never materialized, and the manuscript was not returned to its authors, but the Grimms' interest in collecting and editing folklore did not die. In 1812 they came out with their own fairy-tale collection.

Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was a member of the Académie Française and a leading intellectual of his time. Ironically, his dialogue Parallèles des anciens et des modernes (Parallels between the Ancients and the Moderns), 1688-1697, which compared the authors of antiquity unfavorably to modern writers, served as a forerunner for the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, an era that was not always receptive to tales of magic and fantasy.
Perrault could have not predicted that his reputation for future generations would rest almost entirely on a slender book published in 1697 containing eight simple stories with the unassuming title: Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals, with the added title in the frontispiece, Tales of Mother Goose.
Charles Perrault, in a symbolically significant gesture, did not publish the book in question under his own name but rather under the name of his son Pierre.
He chose his stories well, and he recorded them with wit and style. His narratives belong to a story-telling tradition that has been shared by countless generations. He did not invent these tales -- even in his day their plots were well known -- but he gave them literary legitimacy.

Analysis of Literature for children. Writers and most important contributions.



Vladimir Propp was born on April 17, 3 days after me, in 1895 in St. Petersburg. He was part of a German family. He attended St. Petersburg University (1913–1918) majoring in Russian and German philology. Upon graduation
he taught Russianand German at a secondary school and then became a college teacher of German.
His Morphology of the Folktale was published in Russian in 1928. He broke up fairy tales into sections. Through these sections he was able to define the tale into a series of sequences that occurred within the Russian fairytale. Usually there is an initial situation, after which the tale usually takes 31 functions. Vladimir Propp used this method to decipher Russian folklore and fairy tales.

 



 Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 – March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children. Bettelheim analyzed fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology in The Uses of Enchantment (1976). He discussed the emotional and symbolic importance of fairy tales for children, including traditional tales at one time considered too dark, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm. Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially-evolved stories, children would go through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures. In the U.S., Bettelheim won two major awards for The Uses of Enchantment: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the National Book Award in category Contemporary Thought.^[3]His writings covered a wide range of topics, beginning shortly after he arrived in the United States with an essay on concentration camps and their dynamics. He long had a reputation as an authority on these topics.^[4]

 

 Maria Tatar is an American academic whose expertise lies in children's literature, German literature, and folklore. Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Chair of the Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. Tatar earned an undergraduate degree from Denison University and a doctoral degree from Princeton University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Maria Tatar is well-respected in the academic field for her fairy tale studies and texts as well as one of the most published. She is a professor at Harvard University's Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Maria Tatar’s engaging preface provides readers with the historical and cultural context to understand what these stories meant and their contemporary resonance. Fans of all ages will be drawn to this elegant and accessible collection of stories that have cast their magical spell over children and adults alike for generations.

Kieran Egan (born 1942) is a contemporary educational philosopher and a student of the classics, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and cultural history. He has written on issues in education and child development, with an emphasis on the uses of imagination and the intellectual stages (Egan calls them understandings) that occur during a person’s intellectual development. He has questioned the work of Jean Piaget and progressive educators, notably Herbert Spencer and John Dewey. He currently works at Simon Fraser University. His major work is The Educated Mind.
Kieran Egan is the director of the Imaginative Education Research Group, which was founded by the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. The goal of this group is to improve education on a global scale by developing and proliferating the ideas of Imaginative Education^.

My Little Traditional Tales Cmap

Analysing an advertisement picture

    I chose this advertisement picture in order to display a humorous way of reacting before death. Death is not supposed to be frightening at the moment you watch the picture, it only makes you think about the reason of getting closer to see it.
The first thing I noticed looking at this advertisement is how my attention was caught instantly by the single command which is written in the middle of the picture. In the picture there is a photograph of a subway station, and the Ad is opposite the platform of it. The humour was denoted after reading the phrase ‘Come a little closer’. The reason was that if you got closer, you would have to jump on the railway, and the train would run over you, possibly killing you. And the fact is that your family would have to take on funeral services in case you were dead. The advertisement uses color contrast between the white picture background and the letters of the phrase in black. and black hair to center your eyes on her rather pail face, and more specifically her green eyes. What is crucial to this advertisement is that attention is attracted through death. The advertisement simply wouldn't work the same if the ad was in the street or on a wall along the centre of a city. The authors thought about a very dangerous place in order for the phrase really had sense.

I liked that certain strange way of advertising their services. And I definitely think that it is the best way of making you think about your own death through a humorous message technique. I think that another way of advertising funeral services would cause a lack of interest. Death is something which frightens people and considering it through humor is a way of making it look of less importance.  Maybe writing a phrase as ‘Smoke it and then we do the rest’ as regards cigarettes, would be also a funny way of making people think about the damage it causes.  

Gimme Shelter in World War

 

Gimme Shelter in- World War

 

Through this photographs presentation, I will show the relation I found between the song, the photographs and the story carried out in Farewell to Arms. I chose a Rolling Stones song, considered as a hymn for themselves. On the recording of the song, Jagger said, "Well, it's a very rough, very violent era. The World War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And War was not as we knew it in the conventional sense...’ On the song itself, he concluded, ‘That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse^’. Before becoming aware, one of my favourites Stones’ songs showed reflected upon Henry’s story, and Hemingway’s explanations about what rain meant to him.  

Gimme Shelter

Oh a storm is threat'ning my very life today.              
If I don't get some shelter,
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away.

War, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.
War, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.

See the fire sweepin' out very street today,
Burns like a red coal carpet, mad bull lost its way.

War, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.
War, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.

Rape!  Murder!  It's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.
Rape!  Murder!  It's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.

The floods is threat'ning my very life today.
Gimme, gimme shelter or I'm gonna fade away.

War, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.
It's just a shot away, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.

Love, sister, it's just a kiss away, it's just a kiss away.
It's just a kiss away, it's just a kiss away, kiss away kiss away.

Storm and Henry’s entire life being threatened He needs Catherine shelter to survive or he will die. (Storm, explosions, and soldier’s shelters pictures) War pictures relating the scenes he described in the story, and scared children’s pictures, where it is shown their fear. Fire sweeping out the city streets, leaving a red coal carpet showed by the soldiers’ corpses. A shot from distance… which possibly could hurt anybody including Henry while he was doing his job. Raped women photos related to what really soldiers made with women. Floods (Pictures) caused by the pouring rain, Henry kept on breaking through, and at the same moment thinking about his love, Catherine and her fear for rain. Love, which remained permanently inside, and reflected upon his love, Catherine and their never ending kisses. There are many photographs displayed about lots of romances which were there, trying to fight also against war and distance.

Analysing an advertisement

Immediately after listening to the marvelous and unbeatable Rolling Stones’ piano, the relation between the words of the song and what started to happen in the ad caught instantly my attention. I kept still waiting for the rest of the words within the song to come, but actually it was the chorus part being repeated twice. I thought it had been an awesome technique to compare the high quality image of a new Sony led TV to the great amount of colors within a rainbow or to the feeling which a beautiful woman could cause before a man’s eyes.

Firstly, the ad employed the rolling stones’ song She’s a rainbow in order to produce a sense of familiarity when listening to a well known song, which referring to the lyrics, the singer of the song, Sir Jagger, is showing a great delight at the woman he is singing to, comparing her to the joy of watching at a rainbow after a heavy rain or an unpleasant moment in one’s life. ‘She comes in colours everywhere, she combs her hair, she’s like a rainbow, comes in colours in the air and everywhere, she comes in colours’. The ad relates these words to the quality of an image that can be appreciated through this TV set.

Secondly, the ad used bouncy balls in order to cover the entire screen with coloured balls bouncing along San Francisco Streets where it took place. The ad does not include information related to what is most important when choosing a TV set to buy. It only shows millions of colours and at the end of the ad, the words “colours…like no other”, in order to make you realize that the more colors you would distinguish at the moment of watching a film or a TV programme, the better. In fact, the brand loyalty arises by itself when a new Sony product is being advertised. Once people are able of having any of these brand products, will know indistinctly about the long term durability or highest quality not only in video but also in sound and in any Sony product.

Lastly, the ad employed a personification between the main character of the lyrics of the song, a woman, and the TV set. The use of both symbols comparing the TV image to a beautiful woman, who comes in colours everywhere, was used as an impact tool, making the buyers think about beautiful women, or the joy you feel when you are in love with somebody. Colours all over you see.   

When The Whip Comes Down