Week Ten: Reading Diary

Part A: I read American Indian Fairytales. What I noticed about this reading unit is that many of the stories started out though storytelling. A wise, old member was sharing his wisdom and knowledge through stories with younger children. In the stories, he is always referred to as Iagoo. He starts with Shin-ge-bis Fools the North Wind, which tells the story of how the North Wind was scared away. In the story, the Diver, Shin-ge-bis, scares away the North Wind with heat. The North Wind can't harm him inside his wigwam because of the heat (he melted) or outside, because he grew weak from body heat. In the end, the North Wind goes far away and now only yells, "Whoo!" at night. I thought this was interesting, because the story gives inanimate objects a personality and large part. It's common in fairytales to give animals or even magical creatures full personas, but the wind? It was something I hadn't seen before in my other units. In The Child of The Evening Star, characters lose youth and gain it, sisters and their husbands get turned into birds and then drawfs, and the main characters live among the stars. The story is pretty long, but basically, out of 10 sisters only the modest, shy and honest sister gets the handsome husband who is actually the son of the Evening Star. The others are turned into birds and eventually into drawfs.

Part B: Another thing I noticed about this unit was that there were no morals. In general, not all of the bad or good characters were punished for their actions. Most of them just discussed how today's phenomenons came about. For example, The Boy Who Snared The Son told the story of a young boy and girl who lived in a much different time. Back when animals out populated humans and humans didn't eat animals, the boy used a bow and arrow to kill birds for a coat. As punishment, the Sun shrank the coat, so the boy sought revenge. He lassoed the Sun and only the Dormouse could eat away the lasso, but in the process burned half his body. In the end, the Sun was free and the boy faced no reprecussions. The Dormouse however, was reduced to the size of a moose today.