Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Fabric of Literature

Last week, my daughter and I wrapped up our homeschool project; reading and discussing Cinderella stories from around the world. From the meek slave Rhodopis of Egypt with her golden slippers, to the humble straw-sandaled Pear Blossom of Korea, to China's Yeh-Shen and her miraculous fish, to Bacum of Ireland - a cowherd boy with a magic bull who earned the affections of a princess after proving his identity by fitting his massive foot into his giant missing boot.

To my daughter, this project was nothing short of sheer whimsy and magic. Cinderella - a story so familiar and beloved - existing in mysterious and distant places and times. Some of these stories were even believed to carry elements of truth, of simple and honest people who came to be identified as special and worthy of royal attention. It is not surprising that such tales have been so easily told and retold, even if embellished with fairy godmothers, talking fish bones, and magic shoes.

It was not my goal to merely entertain my child with reading practice using a favorite, familiar story, but rather to inspire her to understand - in her own way - the fabric of literature itself. To encourage her to conclude on her own that stories are told and retold, that plot and characters and imagery are digested, blended, and recycled, to form new stories. This is the legacy of storytelling and the foundation of literature at its most basic level.

This weekend, we hosted a Multicultural Feast for our Girl Scout Troop in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. To culminate our Cinderella experience, I encouraged my daughter to paste together a great display board of the stories she had read. I printed out images from the stories, which she cut and arranged.

I had assumed she would arrange the images by nation - these from Korea's story, those from Ireland's. What she did instead made me truly smile. "These are all the shoes" she said "all together, for each story had a shoe" - "and these are the magic helpers, for each hero had someone magical to help him or her."

We've taken it further this week, a bit. A friend recommended Percy Jackson and the Olympians as a series of books we might read for fun, for they have a complex enough storyline to entertain my story-hungry child, but lack the kind of content that causes nightmares. I thought it would be a good idea to give her a head's up on who the Olympians are, and yesterday we pursued the internet looking for pictures of the Olympians, their names (Greek and Roman), and their domains of mythological influence.

Primed by our Cinderella experience, my daughter was afire with connections. Jupiter is called Jupiter because it is the biggest planet, and Zeus (the Greek equivelent of Jupiter) is the king of the gods. Nike shoes are named after the Goddess of Victory because runners like to win races. King Triton's appearance in The Little Mermaid, she realized, is not true Disney innovation, but a resurrection of Poseiden.

What a wonderful epiphany for her to have at seven years old as she is just embarking on a lifelong quest of reading.

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