Princess Furball

Author: Charlotte Huck
Illustrator: Anita Lobel
1989 Greenwillow Books

This book was quite different from the story of Cinderella that I am most familiar with. There are no evil stepsisters or an evil step mom. This is a European version of the classic story that most girls fall in love with when very, very young.

The princess has a father, a king, and he does not have much time to attend to her but she has an Old Nurse who is very wise and tries to make the princess as happy and successful as possible. She is allowed to play with the children from the village, visit the Cook and learn from him, but the Old Nurse never forgot that she was still a princess so she still is taught the most proper of manners, has many tutors. "...so the Princess grew to be strong and capable and clever, besides being beautiful." The classic image of what a princess is like, at least in the fairy tales. Well the Old Nurse dies and she is basically all alone once again. To make matters worse her father promises her to an Ogre, so she asks her father for three wedding presents. She is clever in thinking that these will be impossible to attain but alas her father was successful in giving her the gifts: three dresses - "one as golden as the sun, another as silvery as the moon, and the third as glittering as the stars." The last gift was finally ready, a fur coat made of thousands of different kinds of fur. The Princess decides that she must run away, so she does, she pack up some of her belongings and is on her way. She is found later the next day sleeping in the trunk of a tree by the King whose land she was on. She is taken by them and forced to work in the kitchen doing all the chores that no one wants to do. One day the King has a ball at the castle and the Princess convinces the Cook to let her go for half an hour. She runs to her shed and put on one of her dresses and goes to the ball, well this happens three different times. The King finally realizes that she was the mysterious woman from the balls and begs her to marry him and it happens the very next day. Finally after all of her troubles she gets the fairy tale ending, and lived happily ever after with the King.

Like I said this was some what close to the version of Cinderella that I was familiar with, but it had its own twist to it that the Disney version does not have. I really enjoyed this one, but the Disney version is still better, in my opinion, but that may be just because I am familiar with it and have grown up with that version. This story is also very classic and I could see it being around for a long time and being read to many, many little girls. I was not particularly a huge fan of the illustrations in the book. I really only liked the way that the hair on the characters was done, for some reason. The princess of course had the most lavish and beautiful hair compared to all of the rest in the book. They were done with watercolor and gouache. The illustrations were also one page ones where each page had a distinct and relevant panting to correspond to the text. I suppose I also loved two of the dresses that were in the story, that one that was of the sun and the other of the moon. The thing that I love about fairy tales is that although not possible it teaches children to think outside of what they know is reality and reach beyond to what their minds can create. Now you can't encourage this to go too far or the child may get stuck in the fairy tale world, ha (I would love to live there!!!). One thing that as a teacher you could do, is read the original (or even have the class take turns adding a part of the story outloud) and then read this version and after all of that is said and done, the children could create a story of their own. It could be developed into an on going process that would work on writing and reading skills.

"Fractured Fairy Tales: Cinderella"

Mine was for the Lon Po Po, the gingko nut and then on the right is the cape of Little Red Ridding Hood. Sorry about the mess coffee spilled on it and my printer stopped working. I will reprint everything and repost a better picture later on.

Little Red Ridding Hood, Jerry Pinkney

Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator)

Hachette Book Group 2007

Picture Book, Folklore

All Ages

This is your classic tale of Little Red Ridding Hood.  A little girl is sent by her mother to go to her grandmother's house so she can bring her food since she is not feeling well.  She is told to go straight there but on her way Little Red Ridding Hood see a wolf and stops to talk to him, he has an instant desire eat her.  Being clever as he was he asked where she was going and told her he was going to tag along.  Well along the way she stops to pick up fire wood so that she can help to warm up her grandmother, while doing so the wolf runs ahead and goes to her grandmothers house.  When he gets there he gobbles down the grandmother in one gulp.  Little Red Ridding Hood gets to her grandmothers house and the wolf is in the bed, well we all know what happens.  He ends up eating Little Red Ridding Hood, well he falls asleep and starts snoring really loudly.  The wood cutter hears the snoring and goes inside and finds the wolf sleeping in the grandmothers bed.  He ends up killing the wolf and splitting open the his stomach and the grandmother and Little Red Ridding Hood jump out.  Well they enjoy her mothers soup and then Little Red Ridding Hood goes straight home and has no more run ins with any evil forest animals.

This is the classic story that everyone knows and loves very dearly.  Pinkney did not change the basic story himself but he did the illustrations for the classic story.  The illustrations that he did were done with pencil, water color, gouache and ink on paper.  The illustrations are wonderful, very detailed and they portray the story beautifully!  You could have children read different versions of the classic story then have them compare and contrast the stories.

Teaching Links:

Little Red Riding Hood and other Fairy Tales

First-School

Read.Write.Think

Swamp Angel

By: Anne Isaacs

Illustrations: Paul O. Zelinsky

Puffin Books, 1994

Tall Tale, Picture Books

K-4th Grade

Caldecott Honor 1994

This is a story about a girl named Angelica Longrider, or more commonly Swamp Angel.  From the day she was bore she was, lets say, larger than life.  She grew up in a traditional Tennessee home back in 1815.  By the time she was two she had already built a log cabin, and once she was grown she was able to do all sorts of mind boggling things.  One summer there was a giant bear that was raining hell on the Tennessee settlers, he was known as Thundering Tarnation.

                                           I would say this would be his baby picture.

Since Thundering Tarnation had eaten all of the food the settlers became worried since it was almost winter and a great reward was set for anyone who could get his pelt.  As soon as people heard about the offer all sorts of Tennessee daredevils started trying to capture the giant bear, and since it was unheard of for a women to do such work everyone gave Swamp Angel a hard time about wanting to try to capture Tarnation.  All of the daredevil men tried and they all had all sorts of terrible things happen to them as a result of Tarnations antics.  Well it finally came down to Swamp Angel being the only one left to try to defeat the giant bear.  Well they started to fight and Swamp Angel threw him up into the sky and thought she had lost him there.  She was so determined to get his pelt she did many different things, at one point she even had to drink a whole lake until it was dry as a bone.  Well finally a giant pine tree fell on top of Tarnation and killed him.  That night they fixed Tarnation up and fed everyone in Tennessee, there was a great big celebration.  Well Swamp Angel decides to keep the pelt as a rug but it was too big for Tennessee so she moves to Montana.  And people think that they would never see anything of Thundering Tarnation but when Swamp Angel threw him into the sky he left a permanent mark up in the stars.

This is a fantastic story, so creative and innovative, it seems that most people do not try to create new tall tales such as this one, which makes it spectacular!  Isaac's definitely had fun writing this story, at least I would think so if it were me!  From the get go Swamp Angel is larger than life and already doing things out of the ordinary!  It would be an excellent and entertaining story to read with a class.  Getting the children to try to predict what is going would be something that would be really fun and would be useful with teaching creative thinking and story telling.  You could have the children create their own tall tales and even have them illustrate them, it could be something that could be turned into a longer project that dealt with creative writing and then have a the final project where they actually make it into a book.  Speaking of illustrations, the ones in this book are FANTASTIC!   They were painted in oils on cherry, maple, and birch veneers.  They fit with the story and they type of tale that it was just so perfectly!  The illustrations were so detailed and something that could be looked at over and over because there was always some small detail that I did not notice at first glance but only saw after I looked through them again.  It is refreshing to see someone create another tall tale that is current and yet sticks with the traditional genre.

Lesson Plans:

Tall Tale Lesson Plans

Read.Write.Think

Reading Is Fundamental

ArtsEdge

Lon Po Po-A Red-Riding Hood Story From China

Ed Young (arthur and illustrator)

PaperStar Book, 1996 (Part of Penguin Books)

Folklore, Picture Book

2nd-4 Grade

Caldecott Medal winner in 1990

Similarities:

This is a story that is very similar to a folk tale that we all know, Little Red Riding Hood, but this is the Chinese verse of this story.  It is similar in that there is a wolf that is trying to get to a little girl, but in this version it is three little girls, Shang, Tao, and Paotze.  Also like the American version of this story the wolf is hungry and trying to eat the little girls.  The wolf disguises its self as the grandmother in both versions also.

Summary:

When the girls mother leaves to visit their grandmother on her birthday a big wolf sees the mother leave, so later that night the wolf dresses up as an old woman and goes to knock on their door.  Pretending to be their "Po Po" or grandmother, the youngest two girls get excited about seeing their grandmother and open the door for the wolf.  The wolf is smart and blows out the candle so that no one can see his face, he then acts as if he is tired so they all go and lay down.  The eldest daughter, Shang, feels the tail at the edge of the bed but the wolf makes up a story that would explain why it feels like fur and also why he has sharp claws.  Shang lit the light and was able to catch a glimpse of the wolf's face before he blew out the light.  Shang, being a very smart girl realizes that she must get her and her sisters out of the house and away from the wolf, she asks him if he had ever had gingko nuts.  The wolf expresses desire for the nuts but also that "no longer can she climb trees" so Shang suggests that the three of the girls go and get the nuts.  So the girls never come down and tell the wolf that he has to come get the nuts in order for them to be magical, so the wolf gets a basket and some rope and throws it to the girls.  They "attempt" to bring the wolf up in a basket but keep dropping it until "not only did the wolf bump his head, but he broke his heart to pieces" and was dead.  After they made sure that the wolf was dead they climbed down and went to bed and slept.  When their mother returned the next day they told her of the wolf who had tried to eat them.

Reaction:

I loved the similarities that were in this book but more so the small and big differences that it had between the American version and this version.  I loved how the illustrations were done in panels and that each page had multiple panels to it. I think that it might have been done with oil and or water color, but I am not very sure at this point.  I believe a lot of the old traditional Chinese paintings were done with water color so that is perhaps was Young was trying to capture here.  I think that perhaps one reason Young might have chosen to do the panels is because, in my opinion, it is very typical of Chinese art, the paintings that I have seen that are traditional Chinese seem to have a panel effect to them if they are not just straight up panels.  I loved the lack of detail that was in the background of each of the illustrations and that everything seemed to be very traditional in its look, I think this is great for children so they can see some kind of Chinese art and style.  Over all I think that this is a great book to use in the classroom, especially if you compare and contrast it to a different version.  You could even do a version other than the American one of Little Red Riding Hood.  Having done these different versions of the same basic story you could talk about different cultures and maybe why they were different.  When I was looking up stuff about this story I found these links that have different information and activities that go along with this story.

Teaching Links:

Lon Po Po

Teacher Vision

Scholastic

Another Lesson Plan