Storytelling Week 13: Runaway

Once upon a time, there lived a princess whose lifelong dream was to marry a true prince.  She had dated many princes but none of them were exactly what she was looking for. She wasn’t going to settle for she was a young and beautiful princess who was from the richest family and lived in the biggest castle in all the land. 

The princess had long brown hair and big blue eyes and wore the most beautiful cream dress with lace all over it.  Sometimes, she would braid her hair to one side and other times, she would leave it in perfect curls. 

On a Wednesday afternoon, her parents set up her with a prince they knew she would love.  He was beautiful.  He had luscious brown hair with brown eyes and just a little bit of scruff.  He wasn’t typical of a prince but he was everything the princess was looking for, at least in her parents eyes. 

The prince took the princess out to brunch and they talked for hours and hours.  The prince knew immediately that he loved her and wanted to be with her forever but the princess didn’t feel the same way.  Though she enjoyed his company and thought he was a very kind man, she didn’t feel the spark.  After the date, she told her parents she wasn’t sure about him and they were extremely disappointed. 

“Give him another chance,” her parents said.  “You will go out with him again and you will learn to love him.”

The princess didn’t want to but she had to follow her parents’ wishes so she went out with him once again. 

She wasn’t in the best mood on their date because she didn’t want to be there in the first place.  She played along and was the sweet princess everyone thought she was until she saw something out of the corner of her eye. 

Contrary to everything her parents would ever want for her, the princess saw a man and knew it was love at first sight.

He was a regular guy and was nothing fancy.  He wasn’t a prince and certainly wasn’t deserving of a princess but at this point, she didn’t care.  She wanted to be with him. 

She left the prince at the table and immediately approached the stranger.  They looked each other in the eyes and he knew it was love at first sight. 

The princess left with this new love of hers and took him straight to her parents.  She told them, “Mom, Dad, I couldn’t go through with the prince you set up for me but I have found someone else and we are in love.”

“Nonsense! You can’t be with this man for he isn’t even a prince!” they said.

The princess was angry at her parents but she didn’t care.  She knew what she wanted and she acted on it. 

The princess and her new love ran off together and never looked back.  That same day, they were wed.  

Castle

Author's Note: This story was based off of the original story, Princess and Pea.  In the original story, a prince was looking for a true princess and in order to test her, a pea was placed underneath twenty mattresses to see if she could feel it and indeed, she could.  He found himself a true princess.  I wanted to switch my story and have a princess try to find a worthy prince but it turns out that a prince wasn't what she wanted after all.  She wanted a regular man, not someone her parents set her up with. The story I wrote was short, sweet, and to the point because sometimes love is complicated but not for these two.  I mainly used the first paragraph of the original story to tell mine and left out all of the stuff about the testing of a true princess or, in my case, a prince.  Plus, it is possible for a princess to be with someone who isn't a prince and vice versa.  I wanted my last story to be fun and uplifting and thought adding this to my portfolio would do just that.  

Andersen Fairy Tales unit. Story source: Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by H. P. Paull (1872).

Gen. Ed. Review

I am pretty sure I am taking this course as a general education western culture.  For the most part, I did not enjoy my gen ed courses here at OU.  It’s hard to remain interested in courses that don’t have any relation to your major so I didn’t think they were that great.  I did like that for my major, I had to declare a minor so that took up a good amount of my gen ed courses that I was required to take and I really enjoyed those courses. 

I waited until my last semester in school to take my gen ed math course because math is my least favorite subject but I am actually enjoying that course more than I thought I would.  I think that in general, we take a significant amount of gen ed courses and I would like to take more classes within my major or even my minor but with all the rules, too many credits from inside your major won’t count and that is kind of frustrating. 

I do think that it’s important to get a wide variety of courses in college because we should be well rounded and have a broad knowledge base.  Even though I didn’t enjoy all the classes I took, I’m still glad I took most of them so that I have a little bit better understanding of whatever subject it may be.  

knowledge

College Writing Review

Being a journalism major, writing is a huge part of what I do every day.  Even though the writing I do in this course isn’t quite the same as the writing I do in journalism, I think that any writing course I take is beneficial to me in the long run.  One of my first semesters here I took expository writing, what is work.  It was the most writing intense class that I’ve ever taken and it really helped me become a better and well-rounded writer. 

I think that this class taught me a lot about how to write more narrative based stories or novel based stories.  I’m so used to writing news stories that have to be very structured and this course allowed me to be a little bit more creative and explore some different aspects of writing that I don’t get to explore that often. 

I think that it’s important for people to take writing courses in college even if writing isn’t their strong point because it’s not something that you’ll be able to avoid in life.  You’ll always have to write and it’s important to know how to do it and what makes a good story. 

I’m fortunate that we were able to read so many other students’ blogs because it helped me develop my own writing a little bit better.  I really enjoyed this course and the writing aspects that went along with it!

Writing

Reading Diary A: Grimm Unit

This week I decided to read stories from the Brothers Grimm LibriVox unit.  One of the stories from the first half of the unit that I really enjoyed was Rapunzel.  Though I have never actually read the story until now, I knew of its general plot and storyline so it was nice to get a chance to finally read it.  My favorite part of the story was when Rapunzel let her hair down. 

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your hair to me.

Rapunzel had magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold, and when she heard the voice of the enchantress, she unfastened her braided tresses, wound them round one of the hooks of the window above, and then the hair fell twenty ells down, and the enchantress climbed up by it.”

I thought the use of adjectives to describe Rapunzel’s hair was excellent and really allowed me to imagine what that looked like. 

Another story that I enjoyed from the unit was The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean.  I thought the story was different from some of the others in this unit which I appreciated.  It made me laugh that the inanimate objects like the bean and the coal and the straw could all talk and were appreciate that they escaped their death of burning in the fire of losing their skin and being made into broth. 

Overall, I thought this unit was full of fun and quirky stories and I really enjoyed them.  It seemed like some of the stories were a bit random and didn’t fit together like some of the other stories in the European units but I kind of like it that way.  

Disney's Rapunzel

Portfolio

Here you can find a few of my favorite stories so far.  Feel free to comment and leave suggestions! 

Storytelling Week 13: Runaway

Storytelling Week 11: The Mystery of the Poptart

Storytelling Week 6: The Game 

Storytelling Week 5: The Tree

Reading Diary B: Andersen Unit

 I really loved part one of the Little Mermaid story.  The word choice and language in these stories is so fun and vibrant and really descriptive.  I also like how positive and bright the story is at the beginning.  The descriptions of the scenery made it really easy to imagine what the sea must have looked like and the types of creatures and nature you would see under the sea like the flowers being as red as the sunset and the marble statue that was carved out of white stone and the blue sands. 

One of my favorite parts of the second story was the paragraph about the large ship.  It was easy to imagine what was going on and even easier to imagine the young prince.  He was described as the most beautiful of all, with large black eyes and sixteen years old. 

Even though this story was turned into a Disney movie, the writing is very mature.  I think that sometimes people underestimate the writing of a children’s story because of the content, not because of the actual writing itself. 

I think if I were to retell this story I would focus on the first one and include even more detail about what under the sea looked like.  It would be interesting to use the kind of descriptions the author used in these stories and make it a little darker instead.  Though I usually don’t like to turn my stories darker than the original, I think it would make for an interesting story and the way the scenery would be described would be really different. 

Overall, I really liked the Little Mermaid and the entire unit as a whole.  The story was just how I imagined and remembered from the movie as a little kid.  I had never read the stories until now; I had only seen the movie.  I’m glad I was able to know the story from the writing, not just the movie.  

The Little Mermaid 

Reading Diary A: Andersen Fairy Tales Unit

I thought the plot of the first story, Princess and Pea, was pretty interesting.  I liked how the Prince was trying to decipher whether the princesses he came across were real princesses or not.  He finally realized she was a real princess after she slept on top of twenty mattresses with a single pea on the very bottom and said that she slept poorly because she could feel something hard.  They concluded that only a real princess would be that sensitive and would be able to feel a pea under all those mattresses.  I thought the ending was a little strange though how they put the pea in a museum.  It didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the story but I still liked it overall. 

Another story I liked was The Emperor’s New Suit.  I think that I might try and retell this story for the storytelling post this week.  I particularly like the beginning of the story which is about an emperor who spent all of his money on clothes because his only ambition in life was to be well dressed.  I think it might be fun to retell this story from a woman’s point of view and also maybe from a college girl’s point of view because I personally know a lot of people who spend all of their money on clothes even when they have other things they need to be taking care of instead. 

I am looking forward to reading the story of the Little Mermaid tomorrow and depending on how well I like the story, I might consider retelling some parts of the original for my storytelling post this week instead of retelling the Emperor’s New Suit.  

Princess and Pea

Storytelling Week 11: The Mystery of the Poptart

The bus just dropped my brother and me off after school and we both ran, heading towards our house. 

We couldn’t be more excited to get home because there was a special surprise waiting for us when we got there.  Before we left for school this morning, we had our normal breakfast that consisted of toast and eggs but Mom told us that when we got home, we could have a snack and we were very excited for that since this wasn't a common occurrence.  The snack we both wanted so badly was the most delicious blueberry poptart with icing and sprinkles.  We had seen it in the pantry but knew it was off limits and we could only eat it on special occasions.  That’s why we were so surprised Mom said we could have it because it wasn’t a special occasion at all.  It was just a regular Tuesday. 

Finally we got to the house and ran inside to the kitchen where Mom was waiting for us.  When we saw her, though, she had this sad look in her eyes. 

“Boys, I’m sorry to tell you but the poptart is gone,” she said.

Shocked, my brother and I looked at each other.  “What happened to it, Mom? We didn’t eat it!”

“I don’t know what happened to it.  It was here when I left for work this morning and gone when I got home.  I’m sorry, boys, I don’t know what to tell you.”

I was particularly puzzled because I knew that I didn’t eat the poptart and there’s no way my brother could have eaten it either because we were both at school today.  But then I started thinking, who could have eaten it?  I was at school, my brother was at school, my mom was at work, and my sister was at school too. 

I was going to get to the bottom of this.

I ran up to my sister’s room and busted open the door yelling, “Megan! Did you eat the last poptart? We can’t find it and someone had to have eaten it!” 

“I didn’t eat your stupid poptart. I don’t even like them anyways.  Get out of my room!” she yelled.

I didn’t believe her!  She loves poptarts!  I’ve seen her eat them all the time.  I knew she had to be lying to me.

Back into the kitchen I went, calling for my mom on the way. 

“Megan said she didn’t eat the poptart but no one else could have done it and Megan was the first one home from school today.  It had to be her.”

“Son, there’s nothing we can do about it now.  The poptart is gone.  I’ll get you two something else tomorrow,” She said.

My brother and I were disappointed and weren’t willing to give up hope of finding out who ate our poptart. 

I decided to check, before I went back up to my sister's room, to see if the poptart could possibly be in the pantry somewhere. 

I went over and opened up the pantry and lifted nearly every box and can to see if it was hiding underneath something and nope, nothing. 

But then, there it was.  I saw it.  Its shiny silver package was peeking through the cracks of all the boxes in the back.  It must have fallen from the top shelf and become lodged in the back!  I couldn’t be more excited! 

My brother watched the whole thing and was equally as excited for the find as I was.  I brought the poptart over to the table and opened the package, giving my brother half and half to myself.  We sat there and savored every bite.  It just might have been the best thing I’ve ever eaten. 

Blueberry Poptart

Author’s Note: I based this story off of the original story, Who Stole the Tarts?  in the Alice in Wonderland unit.  I chose to retell a story from this unit because it contains some of my favorite childhood stories and I thought they were all so fun as a kid and still do now.  In the original story, the characters stood before a judge and pleaded their case as to why they weren’t guilty of stealing the tarts.  I mostly gathered my idea for this new spin on the story from the title of the original story, Who Stole the Tarts? which reminded me of poptarts for some reason.  Maybe I’m hungry.  Anyways, I decided to keep certain aspects of the original in mine like a hunt to find out what happened to the tarts and question all those involved.  I decided to have the poptart be hidden the whole time because that happens often to me with food and things in general.  I had similar experiences as a kid when I thought I lost something and it was there all along.  Typically, though, my mom was the one who always found it so I switched it up a bit in this story and had the boys find it instead.  

Reading Diary B: Looking Glass Unit

One of the stories I really liked from Looking Glass was Queen Alice.  I always liked the back and forth between the Red Queen and the White Queen.  Throughout these stories, both the queens are hard of Alice and ask her tons of questions that they queens inevitably tend to answer for her.  Like the other stories I’ve read, I really like some of the language used in these stories.  My favorite story in this three part series was the third one because the Frog is introduced and he’s one of my favorite characters.  I thought that the author did a really good job of describing the Frog and that helped me picture him without seeing an actual image.  I should try and incorporate some more descriptions in my stories so that my readers feel like they can imagine my characters without images too. 

I also really like the story Shaking and Walking.  The way the story was set up made the reading easy and helped guide the reader smoothly through the story.  I particularly like the beginning of the story when the White Queen is telling Alice about the fish and how it must be caught and prepared.  Of course my favorite part of the story is when the little creature turned into a kitten because cats are the best. 

I’m not sure what story I want to retell for my storytelling post yet but I think I might find one from the first half of the unit.  The only problem is these stories are so in depth and long, having three parts, that it will be difficult to condense all the stories into one and keep it within the limits.  

Alice in Wonderland 

Reading Diary A: Looking Glass Unit

I have read several of these stories before as a kid but not as closely as some of the other Alice in Wonderland stories.  My favorite part of Looking Glass House cont. was the poem that Alice read.  I remember reading this as a kid and not knowing a single word it seemed and now that I’m older and reading it again I can’t say a whole lot has changed.  I think that’s why I like this poem so much.  It is so different and includes language that I’ve never heard of so reading it was refreshing.  Even Alice can relate as she says she found it rather difficult to read after she finished it. 

Tweedledee and Tweetledum was another story that I enjoyed reading again.  I thought the rhyme in the story was cute and fun even though it was pretty short.  What I liked about this story and all of these stories in general is the language they use.  There are so many words that are either a little foreign to me or ones that aren’t used very often anymore and I think it’s fun that they incorporated some of those into these stories. 

This was by far my favorite unit thus far.  It makes the reading a lot more fun and interesting when they are stories that you already know and love.  I’ve said it before but it’s helpful too that these stories have such good and vivid images to associate with them.  The new Alice in Wonderland movie really helped me relive some of those moments in the story from the movie.  

Tweetledee and Tweetledum - Alice in Wonderland

Storytelling Week 6: The Game

Once upon a time in a faraway land lived two little kitties, Moe and Lucy; Moe, who was a long haired tabby cat and Lucy, a short white haired cat.  All cooped up inside and wanting to have some fun, the two kitties decided to go for an afternoon stroll.  As they started down the street, they saw Hadley, the meanest kitty of them all.  Hadley had these dark black eyes to match her even darker fur coat.  She looked as mean as you’d imagine. 

Hadley stopped and hissed at them and ran after them until she couldn’t keep up with the two younger kitties much longer and she disappeared into the distance.

Desperately trying to escape the mean old Hadley, the two little kitties were running for their lives when they found Clo, a calico with vibrant orange colors, hiding behind a bench. 

They said to Clo, “Come with us! Hurry and run!  

"It’s Hadley!  And she isn’t far behind!  Hurry! She’s coming, she’s coming!”   

One more kitty again running for her life, Clo took off with the other two in hopes of never coming across Hadley.  

Now there were three little kitties running down the road when they happened upon the group's youngest member, Baker, who was on the other side of the road.  They meowed to Baker, “Come, Baker, come!  

"Hadley is coming! I can almost hear her!”  So went Baker, Clo and the two little kitties all running down the road.

They continued on their journey to escape the meanest cat of them all.   Off in the distance they found Scottish Fold, Pepe, who was sitting near a mailbox.  Again the kitties cried for Pepe to hurry because Hadley was coming.  

All of the kitties were scared for their lives so they ran and ran as fast as they could.  They hadn’t seen Hadley since back before Clo but they knew she was coming so she had to be close. 

They made it to the market, a little ways up the road, where they were greeted by none other than Hadley.  

Clo, Baker, Pepe and the two little kitties knew they had been seen.  

There was nothing to do but freeze in their tracks and Hadley approached them and gave one a whack.  She bopped little Pepe right on the nose and as she did it, she shouted, “Tag!  You’re it!” 

 All of the kitties laughed except for little Pepe who was now trying to catch one of the other kitties! 

 And so the game went on, for hours and hours, until all the kitties had been caught and tagged. 

Tired and worn out, all the kitties went home.  Their game of tag was an afternoon ritual and before the kitties departed, they meowed, “See you tomorrow.”  The kitties were no longer bored from sitting at home and were looking forward to the next day when they would once again run for their little cat lives from their very best friends, Clo, Barker, Pepe and Hadley.  Very soon, they would all meet again.  

Cat hiding 

Author's Note: For this week's storytelling post, I decided to retell the story of The Two Little Cats.  In the original story, two little kitties were going to find some salt to put in their tea and along the way, they ran into some unusual characters.  All of the animals that the kitties ran into offered to help the kitties find some salt for their tea and protect them against the meanest animal of them all, Handre.  I was inspired by the original story to turn their adventures of getting salt for their tea into a game of tag.  Instead of having all the characters the cats ran into be different, I made them all cats and best friends at that.  In the original story, there were two kitties, a cow, dog, crow, snake, a panful of ashes, a package of needles, and a bowl of peas.  I wanted all the animals to be cats because I always see cats running together and I thought it would be something you might see in real life. I wanted to make the story more uplifting from the original.  In the original, the dreaded Handre was killed and eaten by the dog and I wanted my story to be a little more positive than that.  I thought that having all the cats just play a game would be a different outcome than what people might have expected.   Tibetan Folk Tales by A.L. Shelton with illustrations by Mildred Bryant (1925).