Research Paper Thoughts

Hellooo everyone! First off, my apologies for not posting in a while...I know this is not a good thing and I am really going to try not to let it slip my mind anymore. I need to be better at this whole blogging thing. On that note, I wasn't really sure what to write about so I just want to talk a little about my research topic and what I found out recently that I think is interesting.
My mother is a Pre-School/ Nursery teacher at St. Joseph's School in Haverhill, Ma. Its a small catholic school of only a couple hundred students in nursery to 8th grade. (I actually went there for 10 years.) Anyways, for my topic I want to research fairy tales in early childhood education, how they are taught, and how the students react to them. I know when I was a little kid I remember my mom reading fairy tales and nursery rhymes to me, and watching all the Disney movies with my sister and all that fun stuff. However, what I did not know that I found out while I was talking to my mother, is that she used to change the endings to the stories so that I wouldn't get scared! ME scared? pshttt.. My mom teaches three and four year olds, and although she doesn't teach them fairy tales, she does teach them students nursery rhymes. My mom told me that when she reads them the story of the old lady who lived in a shoe, at the point in the rhyme when the old lady "whips" her children to bed, my mom will casually change it to "kiss" her children to bed. Her students have no idea that a change was made and no one gets scared or nervous. I don't know about you guys, but if I was whipped to bed, I would not be happy and probably be scared to go to bed... As for the fairy tales, another woman my mom works with who teaches Pre-School (4-5 years old) has "Fairy Tale Week". She mostly teaches her students about the Three Little Pigs and the importance of building a strong house and helping out others. Yet, the big bad wolf sometimes scares the kids, so at the end of the tale, instead of the wolf eating the pigs, she changes it to that the wolf becomes friends with the little pigs and has dinner with them! I thought that was funny.
Something else I found interesting is that she doesn't even tell the story of Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood anymore because they terrify the kids to the point where some even cry. How crazy is that? My mom thinks its because of how strongly kids today are told never to talk to strangers or wonder off on their own, yet when my mom was little, she was told all these stories, even the scary ones. She even told me that she thought they were scary, but she handled it and they told them in school anyways. Does this mean that kids today are too sheltered? Or is this just the way our world has become, that teaching children about scary things just isn't an acceptable thing anymore because kids of this young age simply can't grasp onto the idea that not everything is good? These are questions that I  will hopefully answer in my paper. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? If so, feel free to add in!

Even this version of the Three Little Pigs has yet another alternate ending!

Giambattista Basile's Profile

Giambattista Basile

            Giambattista Basile was born right outside of the quaint, yet bustling, coastal city of Naples, Italy. Historians have had some difficulty determining when his exact birth year was. It is known that he passed away on February 23, 1632 in Guigliano, Italy. During his lifetime, he was an Italian poet, courtier to many princesses of Italy, a soldier, and believe it or not, “Basile moved to Naples in 1608 and began a career in government, serving in the court of Ferdinandino Gonzaga and holding the post of governor to a number of small Italian states” (Giambattista Basile eBooks-library). Yet most importantly, Giambattista Basile was a fairy tale collector, which is why he is remembered today.

            If it weren’t for Giambattista’s peculiar interest to write down these ancient tales, we would not have the modern day fairy tales we all know and love today, such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Rapuzel to name a few. However, Basile is mostly remembered for his outstanding collection of Neapolitan tales titled, Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille, which means, “The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones". Even though Basile wrote these tales down, he did not publish them himself, it was actually his sister Adrianna who published his stories. She published his stories in two volumes under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis in Naples, Italy in 1634 and 1636. He most likely chose to do this in order keep his interest in fairy tales a secret from society, and maintain his reputation as a tough soldier, and successful governor. An interesting feature about Basile’s writing is that when he transcribed these ancient tales onto paper, typically near Venice and Crete, Italy; he transcribed the tales in the actual dialect, while still adding a bit of his own flare to the tales. By using this technique, Giambattista was successful in preserving the variation of tone used when one told the tales, which most fairy tale collectors chose not to do. This was a main reason why his tales stood out among the rest.

            Despite all of his hard work collecting these ancient historical tales, they were almost lost in time. Thankfully, over a century later, German fairy tale publishers known as “The Brothers Grimm” caught a hold onto Basile’s talented work. They praised his work and dubbed it the first national collection of fairy tales, and the oldest variants ever discovered, and gave it much attention in their third edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

            Although Giambattista Basile lived during a time we today can only imagine, he is still remembered for a reason. That reason is that he was bold and brave. Basile was a man of many talents, and pursued his life as a soldier, courtier, poet, governor, and took a risky chance to pursue what he loved to do, which was collect fairy tales. If it weren’t for him, and his talent of preserving the tone, pitch, and overall feeling in general of the tale, those ancient tales may have been lost forever. We wouldn’t have most of the fairy tales that we know of today because without Giambattista Basile, they may have never been written down for other people to find, and then add his or her own flare to the tale to continue the everlasting tradition of fairy tales.

           

Works Cited

"Giambattista Basile - EBooks in PDF Format from EBooks-Library.com." EBooks-Library.com - Your Best Source for EBooks, Historical Documents and Sheet Music - All in PDF Format. Web. 02 Mar. 2011. <http://www.ebooks-library.com/author.cfm/AuthorID/31>.

"Giambattista Basile." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 03 Mar. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giambattista_Basile>.

"Giambattista Basile: Information from Answers.com." Answers.com: Wiki Q&A Combined with Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Encyclopedias. Web. 03 Mar. 2011. <http://www.answers.com/topic/giambattista-basile-1>.

"He Who Dares Not, Wins Not - Giambattista Basile." Quote Snack. Web. 03 Mar. 2011. <http://quotesnack.com/giambattista-basile/he-who-dares-not-wins-not/>.

Reader Response- Little Red Riding Hood

            As I was reading Little Red Riding Hood again for the first time in a long time, I realized that the picture that the words created in my head were exactly the same as when I was a child, listening to my mother tell me the story. I always pictured a bright, colorful, happy setting in the woods with bright blue skies with the sun shining through the tree tops, birds singing, animals running about, and Little Red Riding Hood skipping joyfully along the dirt path. Even when the “Big Bad Wolf” came into the scene, the mood never changed, for I knew that he was not a real wolf. Therefore, I never associated the wolf as being scary or mean, but more as a funny character who dressed up like a grandmother as a practice joke. All in all, the part of the tale that catches my attention the most now is the moral of the story which is of course, “never talk to strangers”, which catapults me down memory lane back to my childhood when one day, I did just the opposite of this.

            It was a hot summer day during the mid 1990’s. My mom went out to do some errands, so I went over to my best friend and neighbor Jason Toney’s house for a few hours. We did everything together even though we were almost a full two years apart; he was like my little brother. I remember we were playing in his driveway, by ourselves, which wasn’t unusual despite our young ages. We lived in a very safe condo development, and his mother was just right inside the house. Then all of a sudden, a man driving a blue car slowly pulled up to the end of the driveway and stopped. I looked at Jason and he looked at me. We both had no idea what to do, seeing as we had no idea who this person was or what they were doing, and this was not a street that just anyone drove down. The stranger rolled down the passenger side window and started talking to us, but we couldn’t really hear him. I being the oldest took initiative and did the talking. I took a few steps closer to the car while still keeping my distance, knowing that I shouldn’t be talking at all. The stranger then said, “Come closer to the car. Are your parent’s home”? We both nervously and quickly said yes, and then he proceeded to ask where both of us lived, and inquiring information that he did not need to know. I knew then that this was not a normal situation and that we needed to leave. Jason and I sprinted inside to tell his mom, and the stranger quickly drove away.

            Luckily for us, nothing bad happened to Jason or me that day, but only because we knew that we needed to flee the situation and stop talking to that man driving the car. Who knows, he might have been a nice person, but even a young ages like that, we knew we weren’t supposed to talk to strangers and he was very creepy about the whole ordeal. Jason’s mom told my mom about what happened when she got home and they were both very worried, but thankfully we never saw that man ever again.

Therefore, the moral of the story is of course, never talk to strangers. Even if the situation seems safe and nonthreatening, it’s not worth the possible consequences. Who knows, that stranger might just be the”Big Bad Wolf”.

1st Post

Hey everyone, this is my first post. I'm just getting started so bare with me.