Reading Notes Part B: American Indian Fairy Tales

It seems like anytime there is a new reading, I always enjoy the fairy tales the most. Fairy tales of different cultures are so interesting to me and so fun to read. It's nice to see other ways of telling fairy tales and how they are enjoyable for all people no matter what culture.

As soon as I started reading "The Boy Who Snared the Sun" I immediately got a feel of how valued nature is to Native Americans. That is something that I probably wouldn't want to change in my retelling. In fact, as the story begins I can think of a few ways that I could even enhance that moral rather than take it away. I think that would make for a good story.

In the story, the sun shrinks his coat made of birds and he is angry at the sun. The next day the sun doesn't rise and he realizes life is hard without the sun. I could make this into modern day, change the characters but keep the same moral and story. It would be cool to do for Halloween time, with the sun not coming up and people realizing they really need it,

I noticed the other story is also about weather and seasons. It's interesting how important the elements are to Native Americans and how everything has an emotion. It would be fun to write a totally new story in which the seasons have emotions and are almost like real people. There would be a lot of freedom there, because you could give life to anything, even animals. That would be something fun to write.

From How the Summer Came

American Indian Fairy Tales  by W.T. Larned