Extra Reading Diary: Aesop's Fables

Aesop's Fable:

Aesop (Winter): Page 1: The lost kid tricks the wolf into playing a song for him for the wolf ate him causing the dogs to return and chase the wolf away. The second story is about two ducks that took the tortoise on a ride in the sky by hold a stick with his mouth between the two ducks. He let go to brag and fell to his death.

Aesop (Winter): Page 2: I the first story the dog and cock are friends. They go on a trip together and when the cock wakes up he is tempted by a fox to come down but the cock tricks the fox into meeting the dog. In the second story an eagle takes a sheep into the air so the jackdaw attempts the same thing. The Jackdaw is then tangled in it's wool and the farmer cuts off it's wings.

Aesop (Winter): Page 3: An ass and farmer were traveling home off a mountain when the ass thought the quickest way home was down the side of a cliff and plummeted to his death.  The third story is about two people laying under a tree that shades both of them but still complain about how it has no fruit.

Aesop (Winter): Page 4: A stork was caught by the farmer with a group of cranes that had stolen from the farmer and the farmer punished the stork as if he were a crane. The farmer captures a pig, the pig squeals and the sheep question him to why he makes such a noise.

Aesop (Winter): Page 5: The story is about a grasshopper disturbing and owl during her daily rest and the owl tricks the grasshopper into coming into her hollow and eats him.

Aesop (Winter): Page 6: A monkey was asked to dance for the kings celebration and the camel got jealous and tried to beat the monkey's performance. In the camel's clumsy dance he made the other animals mad and was driven off.

A bust of Aesop

Storytelling for Week 5: The BIG Lie

Hi, my name is Linda. I live just outside a small village named Hich a Hich with my aunt. Most of the time we get along fairly well and have a good time with one another. There was one day that I was chasing squirrels through the forest outside of my house. I was looking up at the squirrel jumping through the trees and did not see the log that was crossing my path. Before I knew it I had fallen and I could feel a burning pain in my leg where I had scraped my shin. I went to my aunt for some ointment for my scrape when she proceeded to tell me she had none but handed me two eggs to take to the drug seller to trade for some ointment.

Once I was on my way to the drug seller I was looking all around and out of nowhere a squirrel jumped in front of me as if he were taunting me. I just had to chase him and when I did I fell into a hole in the ground because I wasn't looking where I was running. I had to come up with a story fast. There is no way I could tell my aunt that I had broken the eggs she had given me the same way I had injured myself in the first place. As I walked further toward the town I came up with countless stories that I could tell her. After all the stories were made up I decided to combine them all for the best story of all time.

Once I had arrived back at my aunt's house I told her my ingenious story that I created. I told her that I had misplaced the eggs when I got to the town and looked around hard until I found them fully grown into a chicken inside a woman's house. I told the woman to give my chicken back and to pay her for the work the chicken had done for her. We agreed that I would receive a substantial amount of rice in pay for the chicken's work. I strapped the rice to the chicken's back and we left from the village.

On the way back we stopped because the chicken's back was aching. Some men told me to place a burnt walnut shell on the back of the chicken and it would heal her. The next day when we woke up there was a fully grown walnut tree growing out of his back. The earth around the tree was good so I planted watermelons and muskmelons for growing. I cut a watermelon open and lost my knife. The melon was so big that I found an entire town inside of it and hidden deep within the town was my knife.

After telling my aunt of this great story she began to laugh so hard that she fell down. Once she stopped laughing she told me I wasn't to be trusted to go to town with eggs alone again.

The chicken as in the story 

Author's Note

This story is based off of the story "The City of Nothing-in-the-World." The original story is told in the third person narrative style of an all-knowing narrator. The story is the same with a few aspects of it shortened. Some of the details that were toward the end of the story made the lie seem to drag on and on with no end. The girl hurts her leg and asks the grandmother for ointment. The grandmother gives the child two eggs to take to the drug seller for ointment. After returning from the trip is when the child tells her aunt about all of the wild things that happened on her trip. I decided to tell the story in this style to give a more personalized feel for the child and what really happened along with why she lied. I also added the aunt's reactions to her story. The original story didn't have any detail about why the girl chose to lie and make up the story so I added in my own reasoning for the lie. I chose the image of the chicken because it was honestly the only thing that I could find that I liked. Also the chicken is the cause of the whole made-up story.

Bibliography

 "The City of Nothing-in-the-World" translated by D.L.R. Lorimer and E.O. Lorimer from Persian Tales (1919). Web Source: UNtextbook

Reading Diary A: Persian Tales

The Wolf and the Goat: This story begins with a goat talking to her four children, Alil, Balil, Ginger Stick, and Black Eyes. She was leaving the house when she warned the children to not let anyone in to the house. She told them she would slip her paw under the door when she came home to show it was red to prove it was her. If the shown paw was black then it was the wolf. The wolf overheard what happened and died his paw red. The mother came home to find all but one of her children stolen and went to find the wolf. Upon meeting they agreed to fight. The Goat took gifts to a man that sharpened her horns while the Wolf took lesser gifts to the dentist to get his teeth sharpened. The dentist, being upset, took the gift and pulled the teeth of the wolf. The goat then tricked the wolf into jumping into the river and killed him by gutting him.

The City of "Nothing in the World": The story starts as a girl falls and scrapes her knee so an old woman gives her eggs to take to a man to get ointment. The remainder of the story seems as if it is about how when people tell a lie the lie continues to grow until it gets to be outrageous.

The boy who became a bulbul: This story is about a boy and his father when they go off to cut thorn branches. The stepmother tells them to make a bet on who could cut down the most branches. The father cheats and cuts his son's head off. The daughter finds out and brings the boy back to life as a bird. The bird then kills the stepmother and gives candy to his sister.

Nim Tanak, or Half-Boy: This story is about how the Mouse got her tail cut off and was sent running around to eight different people when each one would tell her to bring something from someone else for the dead wanted.

Arash the Archer