What is Traditional Literature?
Fables
Folktales
Myths
Legends
Folk Epics
A fable is a very brief story, usually with animal characters, that points clearly to a moral or lesson.
A folktale is a story passed down by word of mouth; includes fairy tales, noodlehead tales, talking beast tales, cumulative stories, and tall tales.
A myth is a story originating in folk beliefs showing how the world works; can include supernatural forces cooperating with animals and humans.
A legend is a traditional narrative of a people, often with some basis in historical truth.
A folk epic is a long narrative poem passed down by word of mouth, often about a hero.
Activities For Teachers:
Have students make a postcard. The little prince visits several planets and meets a different character on each one. Imagine that you are a traveler visiting those same planets. Choose one planet and send a postcard from it. Draw a picture of the place on one side and write your message on the other. In your message, identify the character you meet, what he is like, what he represents, and your opinion of the person and place.
Title:
The Little Prince
Author:
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Sub-Genre:
Fable/ Fairy Tale
A little bit about the book:
Published in 1943, The Little Prince is a fantasy about a pilot, stranded in the Sahara, who meets a small boy from another planet. The boy, who refers to himself as a prince, is on a quest for knowledge. The little prince asks questions of the pilot and tells the pilot of life on his own very small planet. This story is told in a simple fashion, as children's stories typically are, but it is not really a children's story. It is a story of a grown-up who has almost forgotten what is important. It is the story of the pilot's reconnection to his own sense of imagination and wonder. It is the story of the re-opening of the pilot's heart. Read more...
Reviews:
A Kirkus Review- The door's wide open on my guess as to how this will sell. It may get a break, it may be read by the right people, those rare adults who can go over the border of the Never Never Land without a backward look, who can sense intuitively that intangible outer fringe of unreality that is wholly real to children. Let's say that those who loved the fey quality in Barrie -- in Robert Nathan --who read their Alice for sheer escape rather than self conscious nostalgia, they will touch the gossamer beauty of The Little Prince, and chuckle over it, and take it as simply and unaffectedly as "St Ex" himself. Perhaps belief in "the little prince" is the forerunner of belief in the gremlins; who knows? This is a fairy tale for grown ups; later the children will claim it, I am sure. It is the tale of the tiny creature who came to Saint-Exupery when he was stranded in the Sahara, who told him the saga of his exotic travels in search of truth, when he left his own tiny asteroid, and visited others, until he reached the earth. It was the fox who wanted to be tamed who taught him that he must return to his own and find there the happiness and the meaning of life he had left....I've seen only a few of the pictures which the author has made an integral part of the text. They are being printed in color -- and the text simultaneously, in French and English. (June 18, 2013)
The Little Prince Book Trailer
Title:
Jack: The True Story of Jack and the Beanstalk
Author:
Liesl Shurtliff
Sub-Genre:
Folktale/ Fairy Tale
A little bit about the book:
Jack lives with his mother, father and little sister, Annabella, in a small, poor village. Jack finds it very boring to work in his father’s fields all day, and dreams of becoming a giant slayer, just like his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Jack.
The giants live Above, in the sky, and the regular people live Below. It’s been a long time since the giants have come Below, but when strange things start happening in the village --- buildings are damaged and some people, including Jack’s father, completely disappear --- people think the giants may be back. Jack is determined to find a way to go after the giants, live out his dreams and bring his father back. Read more...
Reviews:
A Kirkus Review- Boom! Boom! Boom! Giants are real! Jack sees them slide down from Above to raid his farm. Worse, they take his Papa. Inspired by stories about his seven-greats-grandfather, Jack the Giant Killer, Jack vows to climb Above to rescue his Papa. After he grows a giant beanstalk he has the means. Only he hadn’t been expecting his bothersome little sister, Annabella, to tag along. In a land where even a bird poses a threat and poisonous pixies abound, this actually turns out to be a good thing. Annabella has a way with animals and understands the pixies. New friend Tom Thumb helps too. Shurtliff skillfully weaves Jack’s tale together with other classics about giants and elves as well as her own previous book, Rump (2013). It turns out that the kingdom Jack enters belongs to King Barf, and the reason for the giants’ raids is famine. Greedy King Barf is using magic to create gold, and the magic is pulling all the power out of growing things. If the story meanders a bit and the moral about treasuring what we grow feels tacked on, there are still enough boisterous adventures about a wee boy (and girl) overcoming big obstacles and defeating greed to keep youngsters hooked.Fans of retold fairy tales will be well-satisfied. (January 20, 2015)
Activities For Teachers:
Paper-Bag Characters: In this project, students will have an opportunity to further explore their favorite character from the novel. Assign students to decorate the outside of a paper bag to show what the character reveals to others in the book. Instruct them to ll the paper bag with items they’ve collected that show what the character is hiding. Students should be prepared to support with evidence whether that character ever really shares his or her true self in the book.
Jack: The True Story of Jack and the Beanstalk Book Trailer
Title:
Rump: The True story of Rumpelstiltskin
Author:
Liesl Shurtliff
Sub-Genre:
Folktale/ Fairy Tale
A little bit about the book:
In a magic kingdom where your name is your destiny, 12-year-old Rump is the butt of everyone's joke. But when he finds an old spinning wheel, his luck seems to change. Rump discovers he has a gift for spinning straw into gold. His best friend, Red Riding Hood, warns him that magic is dangerous, and she’s right. With each thread he spins, he weaves himself deeper into a curse. Read more...
Reviews:
Publishers Weekly Review- Debut author Shurtliff upends the traditional characterization of this fairy tale's antihero, recasting Rumpelstiltskin as a sympathetic and tragically doomed protagonist. His mother dies shortly after childbirth and only manages to utter half a name, Rump, making him the butt of jokes and also influencing his fate. "In The Kingdom your name isn't just what people call you. Your name is full of meaning and power. Your name is your destiny," he explains. The author effectively builds the devastating events—including the death of his Gran, hunger, and hopelessness—that lead Rump to discover his ability to spin straw into gold, riches he trades to the town swindler, the miller. When the miller lies to the king and tells him his daughter possesses this ability, Rump steals into the castle to help her, trading magic for trinkets until she offers her firstborn, which the rules of magic dictate he must accept. Shurtliff fills Rump's world with common magic and deadpan humor; the picaresque-style narrative gives the maligned character a refreshingly plainspoken voice, while honoring the original story's hauntingly strange events. (April, 2015)
Activities For Teachers:
Rhyme Time- Rump loves making up rhymes for every day things. Take a task you have to do every day and make up a rhyme about it. It could be your homework, practicing, dealing with friends or parents, sports, or chores.
Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin Book Trailer
Activities For Teachers:
Be a Tour Guide- Have students research Egypt and make a brochure of the historical sites in Egypt.
Title:
The Pharaoh's Secret
Author:
Marissa Moss
Sub-Genre:
Myth
A little bit about the book:
When Talibah and her younger brother, Adom, accompany their father to Egypt, they become involved in a mystery surrounding an ancient, lost pharaoh—a rare queen ruler. Someone has tried to make it appear as if she never existed! The queen needs Talibah to help her and her high priest, Senenmut, reclaim their rightful place in history. Read more...
Reviews:
Publishers Weekly Review- A spring break trip to Egypt becomes more intriguing when 14-year-old narrator Talibah discovers a mystery regarding Egypt's only female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, which turns out to involve Talibah's family. Not that she's initially thrilled about this turn of events: “My goal for this trip is to lie by the pool and get a great tan, not run errands for some Egyptian ghost, even if that ghost could be my mother,” Talibah quips (her mother died five years earlier). Talking sphinxes and gods, as well as time travel back to Egypt's 18th dynasty set Moss's (the Amelia's Notebook series) thriller in the realm of fantasy, as Talibah attempts to solve the mystery and put souls to rest. The villain, in the guise of a family friend and tour guide, is largely one-dimensional, though Moss fills the Egyptian setting with evocative imagery. The family dynamics between Talibah, her younger brother and her grieving scholarly father prove to be one of the most compelling aspects of the story. Talibah's b&w sketches support the narrative with pen-and-ink images of obelisks, hieroglyphics, maps and family trees. (November 2, 2009)
Activities For Teachers:
The Amazing Adventures of Beowulf- Encourage interested students to create a comic strip based on Beowulf, stressing the epic's action and adventure. Have them focus on one of Beowulf's three major battles: with Grendel, with Grendel's mother, or with the fire-breathing dragon.
Title:
Beowulf: A new verse translation
Author:
Seamus Heaney
Sub-Genre:
Folk Epic/ Epic Poem
A little bit about the story:
Composed toward the end of the first millennium of our era, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. Read more...
Reviews:
A Kirkus Review- Written more than a thousand years ago in the Germanic tongue from which the preNorman core of modern English is formed, Beowulf is the epic poem of the warrior hero who survived a succession of fierce trials only to languish for centuries thereafter in the entombing clutches of university scholars. This sacred text of the Old English canon, the bane—or, at least, the emetic—of English literature students for generations, has been dusted off and revived by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, a name familiar to many American readers. Educated at a Catholic school in Ulster, Heaney knows firsthand what it feels like to participate in competing historical, cultural, and linguistic traditions simultaneously—as did the ancient author of the epic, who more than a millennium ago straddled the narrowing gulf between paganism and Christianity in northern Europe. Heaney, who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995, began this labor of love in the mid1980s. He draws upon his own considerable skill as a poet and his love of the sound of language to effect this brilliant translation which, despite his predilection for ``weighty distinctness,'' verges on melody. Overall, he has a tendency to avoid Old English's appositional syntax and prefers that a line make sense rather than adhere strictly to alliterative conventions. For the modern reader, these are improvements over earlier translations. Mr. Heaney does a most creditable job of stripping off the layers of venerable varnish and letting the classic tale resound in the ``big voiced'' style of its mortal heroes. (May 20, 2010)
Beowulf by Seamus Heaney Read Aloud
Activities For Teachers:
Design the Battle Field of the Trojan War- This can be done with paper and markers, or can get very involved and include paper mache, popsicle sticks, and other creative materials. The goal is for the students to design the battlefield of the Trojan war, complete with a horse, people, ships and the walls of Troy. This is to get the students to imagine what it must have looked like when the war was being fought.
Title:
Iliad
Author:
Homer
Translated:
Robert Fagles
Sub-Genre:
Folk Epic/ Epic Poem
A little bit about the story:
The Achaians, under King Agamemnon, have been fighting the Trojans off and on for nine years, trying to retrieve Helen, the wife of Menelaos, and thus Agamemnon's sister-in-law. Paris, a son of the king of Troy, kidnaps Helen, who becomes the legendary "Helen of Troy" and "the woman with the face that launched a thousand ships." Read more...
Reviews:
Publishers Weekly Review- More than almost any other book, Homer's Iliad is meant to be spoken aloud, so it's a natural fit for audiobooks. With his fluid translation of ancient Greek into the rhythms of contemporary conversation, Lombardo has rendered the story of the final stretch of the Trojan War and its plethora of jealous, vengeful gods and warriors feasting, battling and endlessly speechifying, more boldly modern and recognizable than the remote marble tableaux conjured by most other versions. Lombardo's expert reading makes the tale's convolutions easy to follow despite its length, and though he doesn't always reach for the extremes one might expect (Achilles' crashing rage sometimes sounds like mere irritation, and soldiers faced with certain death can seem less than petrified), his voice does become mesmerizing. The interruptions between books, in which Sarandon reads synopses of the next, are jarring and unnecessary, since the synopses are printed in a handy booklet, along with a useful map and list of names and places. Similarly, while the thrumming cello and percussion theme that opens and closes each book sets the tone nicely, the electronic chords that sometimes accompany dreams, deaths or appearances of the gods are rather off-putting. Such quibbles notwithstanding, Lombardo's Iliad both sings to 21st century ears and holds true to Homer's original vision; the blind bard would be proud. Lombardo has also translated and narrated Homer's Odyssey for Parmenides.
Iliad Read Aloud by Stanley Lombardo