Week 12 reading: More English Fairy Tales, part B
Today, I decided to again focus on one single story — this time, because I liked it so much. I really enjoyed reading The Stars in the Sky from Joseph Jacobs' More English Fairy Tales.
The first paragraph — "Once on a time and twice on a time, and all times together as ever I heard tell of, there was a tiny lassie who would weep all day to have the stars in the sky to play with; she wouldn't have this, and she wouldn't have that, but it was always the stars she would have. So one fine day off she went to find them" — immediately reminded me of The Maiden Who Loved a Star from the Tejas Legends unit. (You can find my notes about the reading here.)
Unlike the Tejas maiden, the English fairy tale does not end happily. A young girl travels far and wide to play with the stars, only to fall back down to earth and end up alone.
I thought the imagery in this story was beautiful. For example, when the young girl rides on the horse's back, the scene is described like this:
"So they rode and they rode and they rode, till they got out of the forest and found themselves at the edge of the sea. And on the water in front of them was a wide glistening path running straight out towards a beautiful thing that rose out of the water and went up into the sky, and was all the colours in the world, blue and red and green, and wonderful to look at."
Imagining the glistening path and the colors rising from the sea really gave a lot of depth to the story. It made me feel more engaged and invested, and I really enjoyed just reading it. In my own stories, I want to focus on using imagery to complement the plot and characters to add an extra dimension to them.
The first paragraph — "Once on a time and twice on a time, and all times together as ever I heard tell of, there was a tiny lassie who would weep all day to have the stars in the sky to play with; she wouldn't have this, and she wouldn't have that, but it was always the stars she would have. So one fine day off she went to find them" — immediately reminded me of The Maiden Who Loved a Star from the Tejas Legends unit. (You can find my notes about the reading here.)
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| The young girl riding on the back of the big fish. Source: the UnTextbook |
I thought the imagery in this story was beautiful. For example, when the young girl rides on the horse's back, the scene is described like this:
"So they rode and they rode and they rode, till they got out of the forest and found themselves at the edge of the sea. And on the water in front of them was a wide glistening path running straight out towards a beautiful thing that rose out of the water and went up into the sky, and was all the colours in the world, blue and red and green, and wonderful to look at."
Imagining the glistening path and the colors rising from the sea really gave a lot of depth to the story. It made me feel more engaged and invested, and I really enjoyed just reading it. In my own stories, I want to focus on using imagery to complement the plot and characters to add an extra dimension to them.
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