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Howard Schwartz is a Professor of English at the University of Missouri- St. Louis, his book Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism won the National Jewish Book Award in 2005. In his most recent book, Leaves From The Garden of Eden: One Hundred Classic Jewish Tales, Schwartz has gathered fairy tales, folktales, supernatural tales and mystical tales- representing the full range of Jewish folklore, from the Talmud to the present.  In the excerpted story below, chosen by Schwartz to help us celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, we learn how a young boy’s talent can save the day.

Long ago, on the Spanish island of Majorca, a young boy spent most of each day at the shore, sketching the ships that sailed into the harbor.  Solomon was a wonderful artist, everyone agreed.  His drawings seemed so real that people wondered if the waves in his pictures were as wet as they seemed-or the sun as hot.

His father was a great rabbi who really preferred Solomon to spend his time studying, but Solomon would always slip away to the shore.

A few days before Rosh ha-Shanah, a ship arrived from the city of Barcelona.  Solomon overheard one of the sailors talking to a local merchant.

“There’s news from Spain that will make every Jew on the island tremble.”

“What is it?” asked the merchant.

“The king and queen have decreed that all the Jews in the land must give up their religion and become Christian.”

“And if they refuse?”

“Then they must leave at once,” said the sailor.

“But what if they want to stay?”

“Then they lose their lives.”

Solomon was frightened.  He didn’t want to leave his beautiful island. He ran home to tell the news to his father, Rabbi Simeon ben Tzemah Duran.

“Must we leave, Father?” asked Solomon.

“I cannot leave, my son,” said his father.  “The other Jews look to me for guidance.  I must stay until they all escape.  But you should go, and I will join you later in Algiers.”

“I won’t leave you,” said Solomon.  “You are all I have since Mother died.  Surely God will protect us.”

Rabbi Simeon hugged his brave son. “Then let us work together and spread the word that everyone must meet in the synagogue.”  They hurried through the village, knocking at the doors of every Jewish home and shop.

When everyone had gathered at the house of prayer, Rabbi Simeon told them about the terrible decree.

“Save us!” they cried out in fear.

They hoped their beloved rabbi would work a miracle.  For they knew his prayers had once turned back a plague of locusts.  Another time, when crops were withering in the fields, his prayers had brought rain.

“You have only three choices,” Rabbi Simeon told the men.  “You can escape by sailing to Algiers.  You can stay and pretend to convert, but secretly remain a Jew.  Or you can defy the king and queen.  As for me, I would rather go to my grave than say I am giving up my religion.” Solomon realized how strong his father was and how he strengthened and comforted his people.

In the days that followed, most of the Jews crowded onto ships, taking very little with them.  They saw to it that the women and children took the first available ships.  Some Jews stayed and pretended to convert, in order to save their lives.  They were known as Conversos, but in secret they continued to follow their Jewish ways.

Only a handful of Jews openly refused to convert.  Among them were Solomon’s father and Solomon himself.  They planned to leave together, once they were certain that all those who wanted to escape had done so.

By then it was the start of Rosh ha-Shanah.  Rabbi Simeon and Solomon and those few who dared enter the synagogue prayed with great intensity, in hope that their names would be written in the Book of Life. For on Rosh ha-Shanah that decision is said to be made on high.  Surely God would hear their prayers and guard over them.

All went well the first day, but on the second day of Rosh ha-Shanah, just after the sounding of the shofar, soldiers rushed into the synagogue and dragged them all away.  They were cast into a prison cell, where Rabbi Simeon continued to lead the prayers by heart.  Solomon would have been terrified if he hadn’s seen how calm his father remained.

None of them slept that night.  Even though Rosh ha-Shanah had ended, they stayed awake, praying.  The cell was very dark, with only one high window.  But at dawn it let a little sunlight in.  When Rabbi Simeon saw it, he said, “Have faith, my brothers.  For just as there is a bit of light, so there is hope, and I feel that God has heard our prayers and will protect us.”

The guard overheard them and laughed.  “You think you have hope.  You have just three days to live.  Then you die.  Let’s see what your God does for you then.”

Rabbi Simeon saw how frightened they were. So he turned to Solomon and said, “Won’t you help us pass the time?  Why don’t you draw one of those ships you do so well?”

Solomon couldn’t believe his ears.  His father was asking him to draw? Solomon felt in his pocket and pulled out his last piece of chalk.  When he looked up, he though he saw a hint of a smle on his father’s face.

Solomon remembered all the ships he had watched from the shore, and he began to draw the one he thought was the most beautiful on the sunlit wall.  The wind he drew filled the great sails, and he added barrels of wine and bushels of wheat.

Solomon’s father and the other men watched him draw until the sun set and the prison cell was enveloped in darkness.  Then they began to pray to God to save them.  Once again, they prayed all night.

The next day, Solomon continued to work on his drawing.  Little by little he finished every detail of the ship, and then he drew the sea around it.  The waves looked as if they might spill right off the wall and splash onto the floor.

The picture seemed finished, but Solomon didn’t want to stop.  His father suggested that he draw the two of them, there on the deck.  This Solomon did, and all the men marveled at the fine resemblances.  Then the second day in prison ended, and again they prayed throughout the night.

When the sun rose on the third day, one of the men asked Solomon to draw him on the ship, too. “For I would like to be with you.” And one by one, the others made the same request.  But when darkness fell, Solomon had not yet finished drawing the last man.

That night they prayed to God with all their hearts, for they knew the execution was set for sunrise the next day.  All of the men shook with fear, except for Rabbi Simeon.  Solomon took strength from his father, and he, too, remained unafraid.

As soon as the first light of dawn came through the window, Solomon took out his chalk and quickly finished drawing the last man.

Just as he drew the final line, he heard keys jangling.  The soldiers were coming to unlock the door to their cell.  Then Solomon and all the men would be taken to the courtyard for their execution.

Solomon turned to his father and saw that he was deep in prayer.  And, at that very moment, he heard his father pronounce God’s secret name out loud.

Suddenly Solomon could not hear the guards in the hallway, and when he looked down, he saw that he was standing on the deck of the beautiful ship he had drawn on the prison wall.

His father and all the other men in the picture were with him, safely aboard a real ship floating on a real sea.  The sails strained against the wind, just as they had in Solomon’s drawing, and the ship sped away from danger.

All the Jews from the prison rejoiced with Solomon and his father- for they knew they were aboard a ship of miracles, on their way to freedom.  They would never forget that Rosh ha-Shanah when God had seen fit to save them.

-The Balkans: oral tradition.

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I shouldn’t be writing this.

I’m about four chapters (I think – I hope) from the end of a book that I actually began writing nearly two years ago. For various family reasons it then got put on hold for at least ten months – and I have nearly 26 different versions of the first four pages: I know, because I labelled them by the letters of the alphabet.

This is a long gestation, even for me. I’m not a writer who plans the book chapter by chapter, then does a first draft of the whole thing. I’m a writer who proceeds by a sort of instinctive groping, like someone following a path through thick mist. There’ll be landmarks on the way – things I come to with relief, because I’ve known from the beginning that they’ll be there. But how to get from one landmark to another – that’s a journey of discovery done step by step.

In my last book, ‘Troll Blood’, for example, I saw from the beginning that at some point the hero, Peer Ulfsson, would find a broken dragonhead from a wrecked longship, lying half submerged in a tide-pool. (This is a good example of a faun-with-an-umbrella: see my last posting!) But it wasn’t for months, when I finally came to write the scene, that I realised the dragonhead symbolised his dead father, and the dragonhead itself took on a spooky, malevolent life I’d never expected. These are things you find upon the way.

And the reason it took months to reach that point is that I write and rewrite every page over and over as I go. Till they feel perfect. This is frustrating for my editor, who has to take the book on trust – there’s never a point where she can ask to see an early draft – because there isn’t one. When I come to the last full stop on the final page, that’s when book is done, finished, complete at last. It’s an emotional moment, like when they finally hand you the baby you’ve been struggling to birth. I sometimes cry.

Fairy tales and folktales are full of stock phrases, repeated over and over with incantatory effect, not just, I think, to aid re-telling and memory but because like snatches of poetry they send a shiver down the spine and are recognised as emotional truth. Here’s one that’s works for me just now: in a Scottish folktale the hero has to travel ‘over seven bens and seven glens and seven mountain moors’ to accomplish his task. Here I am, several mountain moors still to go, but the seven bens and the seven glens are certainly behind me, and it no longer seems totally impossible that I shall, eventually, finish this book!

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By Anatoly Liberman

All words must have been coined by individuals. This statement surprises and embarrasses not only the uninitiated but also some language historians. We are used to thinking that “people” created ancient language and art, but what is people? (This question, though in another guise, will recur below.) A group of activists working together and producing in chorus meaningful sound complexes like big ~ bag ~ bug ~ bog? Or a committee like those on which we sit, organs of collective wisdom? As a rule, every novelty that does not die “without issue” passes through a predictable cycle: someone has something to offer, a small group of enthusiasts surrounding the inventor adopts it, more adherents show their support, the novelty becomes common property, and (not necessarily) the originator is forgotten. We have no way of tracing the beginning of the oldest words, and even some neologisms remain etymological puzzles, but the names of some “wordsmiths” have not been lost. For instance, Lilliputian was coined by Jonathan Swift, gas by J.B. van Helmont, and jeep (which later became Jeep) by E.C. Segar. As a rule, inventors use the material at hand. Swift seems to have combined lil, the colloquial pronunciation of little and put(t) “blockhead,” a slang word common in the 18^th century. Van Helmont was probably inspired by the Dutch pronunciation of chaos. Jeep is sound imitative, like peep. In similar fashion, we have no doubt about the structure of the noun folklore (folk + lore), but the story of its emergence is worth telling.

William John Thoms (1802-1885) began his literary career as an expert editor of old tales and prose romances. He also investigated customs and superstitions. Especially interesting are his studies of popular lore in Shakespeare: elves, fairies, Puck, Queen Mab, and others. They were published in the forties, the decade in which he met his star hour. Special works on Thoms are extremely few (the main one dates to 1946), and the archival documents pertaining to him remain untapped, but he related some events of his life himself. It was not by chance that California Folklore Quarterly printed an article about him (“’Folklore’: William John Thoms” by Duncan Emrich, volume 5, pp. 155-374) in 1946. A hundred years earlier a letter signed by Ambrose Merton appeared in the London-based journal The Athenaeum. Those who have leafed through its huge folio volumes probably could not help wondering how the subscribers managed to find their way through such an enormous mass of heterogeneous materials. Yet that weekly had a devoted readership, and its voice reached far.

The 1846 letter is available in two modern anthologies, but outside the professional circle of folklorists hardly anyone has read it, so that I will quote its beginning and end. “Your pages have so often given evidence of the interest which you take in what we in England designate as Popular Antiquities, or Popular Literature (though by-the-by it is more a Lore than a literature, and would be most aptly described by a good Saxon compound, Folklore,—the Lore of the People)—that I am not without hopes of enlisting your aid in garnering the few ears which are remaining, scattered over that field from which our forefathers might have gathered a goodly crop. No one who has made the manners, customs, observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, etc., of the olden time his study, but must have arrived at two conclusions:—the first how much that is curious and interesting in those matters is now entirely lost—the second, how much may yet be rescued by timely exertion…. It is only honest that I should tell you I have long been contemplating a work upon our “Folklore” (under that title, mind Messes. A, B, and C,—so do not try to forestall me);—and I am personally interested in the success of the experiment which I have, in this letter, albeit imperfectly, urged you to undertake.” Not only did the editor of The Athenaeum welcome the letter. He opened a special rubric for “folk-lore,” and “Ambrose Merton” (this was Thoms of course) became its editor.

The letter was followed by an injunction, part of which is so much to the point that it must be reproduced here: “We have taken some time to weigh the suggestion of our correspondent—desirous to satisfy ourselves that any good of the kind which he proposes could be effected in such space as we are able to spare from the many other demands upon our columns; and have before our eyes the fear of that shower of trivial communication which a notice in conformity with his suggestion is likely to bring. We have finally decided that, if our antiquarian correspondents be earnest and well-informed and subject their communications to the condition of having something to communicate, we may… be the means of effecting some valuable salvage for the future historian of old customs and feelings…. With these views, however, we must announce to our future contributors under the above head, that their communications will be subjected to a careful sifting—both as regards value, authenticity, and novelty; and that they will save both themselves and us much unnecessary trouble if they will refrain from offering any facts and speculations which at once need recording and deserve it.”

Thoms may have regretted the fact that he wrote his letter to The Athenaeum under a pseudonym, for a year later, in another letter to the same journal, he disclosed his identity. He more than once reminded his readers that it was he who launched the word folklore. From time to time somebody would derive folklore from German or Danish. As long as he lived, Thoms kept refuting such unworthy rumors (he also suffered from the neglect of his Shakespeare scholarship); after his death others defended him. The word found acceptance both in the English speaking world and abroad. German, Austrian, and Swiss scholars eventually borrowed it with its original spelling (Folklore), though the German for folk is Volk. By the end of the eighties folklore had become an accepted term in Scandinavia, as well as in the Romance and Slavic speaking countries. The British Folklore Society, which was also formed largely thanks to Thoms’s efforts, adopted the title Folk-Lore Record for its journal (now it is called simply Folklore), and Thoms was elected the Society’s director. In the introduction to the first volume he noted, perhaps not without a touch of irony, that the word he had coined would make him better known than the rest of his professional activities.

As we have seen, the “Saxon” term folklore was applied to the vanishing “manners, customs, observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, etc.” Thoms did not realize how ambiguous his agenda was. For more than 150 years, researchers have been arguing over whether the subject of folklore is only “survivals” (does modern folklore exist?), who are the people, the “folk” to be approached, and whether folklore is the name of the treasures to be collected and described or of the science (“the lore”) devoted to them. Today folklore is often understood as a study of verbal art, but not less often it passes off as a branch of cultural anthropology. In 1846 folk meant “peasantry,” which excluded urban culture. One also spoke vaguely of common people, of story tellers nearly untouched by the advance of civilization, and of the working people in the “byeways of England” (the phrase, spelling and all, is from The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1885). Railways were the main bugaboo of those who watched the rural landscape disappear under the wheels of the devil, the steam engine. Being run over by a train became a literary motif.

In 1849 an event of great importance happened in Thoms’s life: he began publishing his own weekly that, after rejecting many titles and ignoring the advice of some well-wishers, he decided to call Notes and Queries. His old appeal to the readers to send ballads, tales, proverbs, descriptions of customs, and so forth brought many responses, and Thoms was loath to start a rival periodical, for fear of undermining The Athenaeum, but he received the editor’s blessing. The new journal turned into a main forum for letters that Thoms had invited correspondents to send to The Athenaeum. The rubric on “folk-lore” in both periodicals made the term familiar, and later the derivatives (folklorist and folkloric) emerged. Before resigning as editor, Thoms told the story of his magazine in a series of short essays and published them in Notes and Queries for 1871 and 1872. In 1848 Dombey and Son appeared. One of the novel’s most endearing characters is the one-armed Captain Cuttle. Like so many other personages brought to life by Dickens, the good captain has a tag: he likes to repeat the maxim “When found, make a note of.” Thoms used this catchphrase as a motto for his journal, and it was printed on the title page of each issue.

I have already written about the value and the worldwide success of Notes and Queries. This magazine is one of a kind. Personally, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to it, for suggestions on word origins were (and still are) common in Notes and Queries, and I have nearly 8000 of them in my database. Some words have been discussed only in its pages, and some first-rate specialists sought no better exposure of their ideas. The man who invented the word folklore and founded Notes and Queries deserves to be remembered, and I am sorry that no one has written a book about him. The reason may be that he was neither a professor nor a madman. Perfectly sane and of humble origin, he was survived by his wife and nine children.

---

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears here, each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to [email protected]; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.”

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A Chinese Folktale adapted by Caryn Yacowitz, illustrated by Ju-Hong Chen. Pelican Publishing Company, 2005. (first published by Holiday House, 1992) In the back of this picture book is a word from the author Caryn Yacowitz. She explains that the story was heard by a merchant named A. L. Gump on a trip to Beijing in 1917. He told the story to his son Richard, who put it in a book titled Jade,

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I really like the story called "The Sun Sisters" (full text). It's a Chinese story collected in Margaret Read MacDonald's Three-Minute Tales. I haven't yet told it, but I hope it becomes one of my stories. I'm a fan of stories that have to do with the creation and manipulation of textiles. Coincidentally, I read this story right around the time Lucia asked me why she wasn't supposed to stare

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One of the best things about working at Oxford University Press is finding older books you didn’t know about. A couple of days ago I came across The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales: The Western Fairy Tale Tradition from Medieval to Modern, edited by Jack Zipes. I decided to put the volume to the test. Would it have the modern musical interpretation of fairy tales? It did! Below is the entry about one of my favorite shows, Into the Woods.

(more…)

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By Chris Smith, illustrated by Aurelia Fronty. Barefoot Books, 2007. (review copy) Chris Smith has retold this Jewish/Arab fable of how the city of Jerusalem came to be. In the back of the book he says, "If you ever happen to be traveling, and come to the point where Europe meets Asia, and where Asia meets Africa, you will find a city bursting with history and mystery. [...] This story gives an

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Author: De Negro, Janice
Rating:
Reading Level: 4th - 6th grade

Pages: 64
Publisher: Marshal Cavendish
Edition: Hardcover

I really enjoyed the tone of these narratives but found the seven mostly familiar (or with familiar motifs) tales in this slim volume not scary or eerie enough. There exists always a promising build-up but the readers are left short of truly gruesome, horrific, or surprising endings. The cover design is quite effective, with raised blood-red title print, but the interior illustrations are uneven and less than accomplished in many cases. The very good cover art is done by Vincent Natale, but the illustration copyright is attributed to Marshall Cavendish, the publisher -- and the quality of the illustrations definitely feel like work-for-hire jobs.

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I don't know if I've really ever talked all that much about my love of fairy and folk tales on this blog. I mean, I talk about how fantasy draws from those traditions, but I love the tales themselves and finding out about the cultures that gave birth to those tales, theory about tales, and on and on. One of my favorite classes at Simmons was my folklore class, taught by folklore expert and author Kate Bernheimer*. We focused mostly on the Grimm tales in the curriculum because that made for a convenient text, but we also studied retellings like Angela Carter, many different picture books, different versions of the same tales across cultures, and the scholarship of folklore experts like Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar, Bettelheim, Marie-Louise von Franz, and . . . a very important one whose name I'm blanking on.

So when I saw on Endicott Studio a link to Joseph Campbell's reading list for an Introduction to Mythology at Sarah Lawrence, it gave me a whoooole nother list of books I should look up someday. There are so few books on that list that I've read! (Some might be more outdated than others, but it's a good list.) The first one that I need to rectify is The Mabinogion, a gap in my education that I've regretted many times already.

Also in that page they link to Endicott's own favorite reading list, with more books I should read. And reread--some of those books from that class I need to read again.



*Editor of Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales.

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I'm trying to figure out which folktales are okay to tell and which ones I shouldn't bring into my storytimes. Everyone exhorts "multiculturalism" and "world folktales" yet there are so many pitfalls to sharing stories from cultures outside one's own. Then again, just because someone has a particular ethnic background doesn't mean s/he is an expert. My paternal background is Syrian, Eygptian, Russian and Lithuanian. Does that mean I have carte blanche for telling stories from those countries even though I'm not overly knowledgeable of my heritage? (Answer: I think not.)

Some folktales are sacred, and aren't meant to be told outside of those sacred contexts. Many stories have been lifted from other cultures and then tweaked to reflect the values of one's own culture.

As much as I'd love to share some of the stories I've read and learned, I don't want to be a culture vulture looking for story quarry (yeah, I just made up that second part). I want to do the right thing. I wonder: if I find a collection of Iroquois stories published by someone from the Abenaki, does that constitute permission to retell the stories? Or should I just leave alone all stories that come from people who have been oppressed and continue to be oppressed? That's a lot of people and a lot of stories. I'm tired of people being identified by how they've been oppressed... as I am sure are the people who are actually oppressed.

Here's a long article that puts some of the issues in perspective: Swapping Tales and Stealing Stories: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Folklore in Children's Literature, by Betsy Hearne, published in the Winter 1999 edition of Library Trends. Hearn writes,

As more good source notes appear, however, the underlying issue of ownership comes to the fore, sometimes because information makes the question of ownership all too clear. Identifying the source of a story, is only the beginning, it turns out. The next step is considering the broader implications of who tells stories and how they tell them. Indeed, the argument of who owns a story is almost as old and traditional as the stories on which the argument focuses. (page 3 of the article)

And further in the article, Hearn points out that

certainly a culture can simply be omitted because of the complexity of dealing with all these problems, witness Eva Martin and Liszlo Gill's (1987) Tales of the Far North: "The only indigenous folktales of Canada belong to the native Canadian Indian and Inuit peoples. Because these native peoples have such a unique and beautiful tradition of storytelling, no attempt has been made to adapt their stories for this collection. Too often English-speaking storytellers retell native tales only from their own perspective, imposing upon the tales their own vision of life" (p. 123).

True, and conscientiously stated, but now we have a beautiful volume of Canadian tales with no representation of an important cultural group. So how do we deal with folktales crossing cultural and aesthetic borders in the "innocent" fields of children's literature, which on closer examination sometimes resemble battlefields of social values? Is this a no-win situation? (page 12)

If you read through the article, you'll recognize some familiar names: Debbie Reese, Roger Sutton, Jane Yolen, Julius Lester, and Joseph Bruchac, to name a few luminaries.

07/30/07 update: Debbie Reese commented a couple of times on this post and has just published her own post in response: An often posed question: "Who can tell your stories?"

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Wildwood Dancing
by Juliet Marillier

Jena and her four sisters have a secret: every month at the full moon they travel to the Other Kingdom through a secret passage in their room. There, they spend the evening dancing and socializing with the various Folk of the Other Kingdom. It's a welcome release, but Jena knows that the Other Kingdom carries its own dangers, too. The girls keep themselves safe with a strict set of rules, and Jena is always on her guard.

Although the girls live in a world where women have little power, their father is unusual in his attitudes and treats the girls with respect and equality. Jena helps him keep the books for the business, and her sister Paula studies with the village priest. But when Father becomes ill, things are about to change for Jena and her sisters. Father must spend the winter in a warmer climate or risk death, and he leaves the girls, and particularly Jena, in charge of the home and business. But Jena finds herself in conflict with her cousin Cezar, who lives nearby. Cezar doesn't think that women should run a business or study intellectual pursuits, and he gradually begins to take charge of their affairs. Without Father to stand up to Cezar, the girls have no recourse.

Cezar blames the Folk of the Other Kingdom for his brother's death in the forest when they were children, and he is determined to destroy the forest and though it, the Other Kingdom. Meanwhile, Jena's older sister Tati is falling in love with one of the Night People, and Jena doesn't trust him. Jena is caught in the middle as she tries to save both Tati and the Other Kingdom and keep the girls' secret safe.

Wildwood Dancing got off to a slow start, and I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to read it. But by the time I was a couple of chapters into it, I was hooked and pretty much read the rest of it straight through. Although it's based on the story of the "Twelve Dancing Princesses," Wildwood Dancing is no fairy tale: it's a rich, complex story which explores themes of power, perception and forgiveness. Jena is a fascinating character with a complex personality. Although she is intelligent and strong-willed, she also makes mistakes, and those mistakes could have dangerous consequences. I wanted to slap her throughout most of the book, because I figured something out early on that it took her most of the book to find out. Cezar is also an interesting study in conflicts. Although you grow to detest him as the story progresses, you also feel sympathy for him. The other girls are less well developed and tend towards archetypes: the brainy one, the dreamy one, etc.

The book draws on Transylvanian folklore as well as some well-known fairy tales, and Marillier attempts to portray the Night People more in line with the traditional folklore rather than the modern conception of vampires. The book also touches on Transylvanian history and culture.

Wildwood Dancing is a beautifully written, exciting book that will appeal to teens who like exotic worlds, strong heroines, and a touch of romance.

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Somehow growing up I got the feeling that there was something racist, and therefore shameful, about the Brer Rabbit stories. Maybe it was the way black people are portrayed in The Song of the South. Maybe I heard friends scorning the southern black dialect written into the Tales of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris. In any case, I have avoided them for most of my life. What treasures I have been missing!

I have been reading Julius Lester's How Many Spots Does A Leopard Have? to my first graders and we love it. The children are on the edge of their seats. The language is beautiful and clever. Every story sparks discussion.

Since I am looking for a new author study to carry the kindergarten through to the end of the year I decided to look into Lester's Tales of Uncle Remus. I learned from reading Augusta Baker's introduction to The Adventures of Brer Rabbit that the stories had been told to her by her mother, who had heard them from her mother. Ms. Baker is the former Coordinator of Children's Services of the New York Public Library and Storyteller-in-Residence at the University of South Carolina. She says,

"It wasn't until several years later, in college, that I learned about the importance of these stories as true American folklore. Dr. Harold Thompson, a leading American folklorist, gave a lecture on people from the West Coast of Africa who had been captured and sold as slaves. Some were settled in the southern states where they took stories from home about a hare - Wakaima - and adapted them to their new surroundings. Wakaima became Brer Rabbit and the clay man became the Tar Baby."

She says she tried reading Harris' books several times, but never could get past the dialect which was like a foreign language to her.

"Despite the drawbacks in Harris’s text, I still loved the stories and appreciated Brer Rabbit as a cultural hero and a significant part of my heritage. However, I was telling the stories less and less often because of the dialect.... How could I represent our African Background and the relationship between Africa and black America to primary grades? How could I show the fusion of the different African cultures and the cultures existing in American and the West Indies?"

When she first reads Lester's The Knee-High Man and Other Tales in 1972 she found them to be "black folktales told perfectly." Lester went on to publish four volumes of Brer Rabbit tales, as well as many other books for children.

Lester gives a history of the Uncle Remus stories in his forward to The Adventures of Brer Rabbit. He gives the background of the stories coming from West African folktales. He says,

“Uncle Remus became a stereotype, and therefore negative, not because of inaccuracies in Harris’s characterization, but because he was used as a symbol of slavery and a retrospective justification for it… If there is one aspect of the Uncle Remus stories with which one could seriously disagree, it is the social setting in which the tales are told. Uncle Remus, and sometimes other blacks, tell the stories to an audience of one – a little white boy, the son of the plantation owner. While such a setting added to the appeal and accessibility of the tales for whites, it leaves the reader with no sense of the important role the tales played in black life. The telling of black folktales, and indeed tales of all cultures, was a social even bringing together adults and children. That folktales are now considered primarily stories for children is an indication of our society’s spiritual impoverishment. Traditionally, tales were told by adults to adults. If the children were quiet, they might be allowed to listen. Clearly, black folktales were not created and told for the entertainment of little white children, as the Uncle Remus tales would lead one to believe.”

Lester goes on to explain what adaptations he has made in telling the tales, and what important elements he has retained.

To give you a taste of my new found delight here is a link to some of Lester’s tales online. The first three I read this morning and just about spit my coffee across the library they are so funny. If you haven’t read any of Lester’s folktales you are in for a treat!

I believe a whole new window has opened for me on the folklore of America. I am so delighted to have the summer ahead of me that includes a front porch, lazy afternoons when the baby will be sleeping while the preschooler is in the mood to hear stories, and a bookstore gift certificate that will start me on my plan to acquire a stack of Lester’s Uncle Remus books. All we need is some lemonade and a porch swing…

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by Julius Lester, illustrated by David Shannon. Scholastic, 1989.

I am reading this collection of folktales to my first graders this month. They are on the edge of their seats. They can hardly contain themselves till I get to the end of the story with all their questions and comments. I am one of those readers who doesn't like to be interrupted. I think it breaks up the magic of the story to have questions interjected, even for important vocabulary. I would rather have the listeners hold their questions and try to figure out the meaning from the context, so I ask them to listen and then open the floor for comments at the end. These stories are so exciting and fascinating the children are bursting with things to say.

Lester has a unique style that blends poetic language with complex description that beguiles children and excites them. He starts the story "Why Dogs Chase Cats" with "Long before time wound its watch and started ticking and chasing after tomorrow, which it can never catch up to, well, that was the time when Dog and Cat were friends." He describes dog as having "the best hearing of almost any animal in the world. Dog could hear a raindrop fall on cotton." When dog tries to scare away Gorilla, Gorilla picks him up and throws him over his shoulder. "It was three days and five nights before Dog came down to earth." Lester says. The children puzzle over that. They know that doesn't make sense, what could it mean? Several children speculated that Dog was thrown up to the moon and by the time he came down the earth had rotated into next week.

Many of these stories read like a child's dream, with a logic that is magical and resolutions that answer our deepest fears. Lester has fabulous monsters so scary that "even the moon wishes she had someplace to hide." In the story The Bird That Made Milk a group of children run away from home to try to bring back the bird they let escape. When the Monster Who Eats Children comes knocking on the door where the children are hiding, the oldest boy has magic to make a new door in the back of the house. The children escape and run until they are tired. They climb trees and sing to the tree "Be Strong! Be Strong!" so the Monster cannot chop down the tree. When the children are tired and out of breath from singing a flock of birds comes out of the sky and carries them home to safety. My students are breathless with anticipation over what will happen to these mischievous children and visibly relieved when they find their way home to their welcoming parents.

Julius Lester is African American and Jewish. He has been on the faculty at University of Massachusetts since 1971 as a professor in the Judaic and Near Eastern Studies Department, and adjunct professor of History. He has published 35 books for children and adults. He has recorded two two albums of original songs. He is an accomplished photographer with photographs in the Smithsonian, permanent collections at Howard University and several high profile shows. He blogs at A Commonplace Book, where his photographs, essays and favorite quotes inspire me every day.

More links:

Photography
Biography
Book list
Author's Guild home page

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At the end of my hep cat post the other week, I mentioned all too briefly Chris Barton's post at Bartography about fictionalized versions of history in children's picture books. If you didn't notice the mention or read it then, go read it now (and not too quickly either), and come on back. Since we started homeschooling three years ago, I've noticed that one question that comes up often in

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