Fairytale land has a rule, and that is that things happen in threes. Cinderella goes to the ball twice before the prince gets wise and smears pitch on the steps on the third night. Jack goes up the beanstalk three times. There were three little pigs. Rumplestiltskin gave the queen three guesses as to his name, and I believe Goldilocks ran into a trio of bears.
Of course there are counter examples: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Twelve Dancing Princesses, but three is the rule. Remember that in Snow White, the Queen tries to kill Snow White three times and the Twelve Dancing Princesses leave their chamber for three nights.
Why is this? Is there something magical or particularly fairy-like about the number three? I have a few theories…
Easy as 1, 2, 3: As these stories were first told orally and without written reference, three event stories were easiest to remember and retell: First, Next, Last. Copper, Silver, Gold. Straw, Wood, Brick. Hot, Cold, Just Right. This way, the teller doesn’t have to worry about the form, but can focus on improvising the juicy details and building dramatic tension (slowly, slowly, she turned the doorknob… creeeeeeaaaaak).
Two’s company, Three’s a pattern: Three establishes a rhythm and predictability to the story. Children can be assured that the two evil princes will fail when they try to pull the sword from the stone, but that the lowly orphan will succeed. The giant can be fooled twice, but the third time, he’ll catch on. The familiarity of a scenario being replayed is soothing to the child because it is easy to follow and predict.
Filler and Fluff: When your child calls out, “Tell me a story!” and you haven’t got anything on hand, who is ready to keep track of a Harry Potteresque alternate universe with a huge cast of characters and relationships? No one. So you start with a Princess and wing it. You throw in a few details that will titter (“and the Princess had a dog named Fuzzball” hey, that’s your dog’s name, too!). And you try to think of a way to make it last longer than 30 seconds. Um… Um… Traveling to the Sea was good, but now what? RULE OF THREE to the rescue! Do it over! Variations on a theme. Travel to the Mountains. Travel to the Woods. Put everything together (the Water, the Stone, the Wood) and presto: bestest, most magical castle EVAR!
Ever read a book and think it’s going someplace awesome, and it turns out you’re wrong?
This happens to me a lot, but happened in a particularly offbeat way with Edith M. Hemingway’s new book ROAD TO TATER HILL. To be clear, I actually liked this book quite a lot, so it’s not like I was super disappointed with how it turned out. Actually, I’d definitely recommend this middle-grade novel, set in 1960s North Carolina, about a girl whose baby sister has just died and whose unusual means of healing bring her close to the town outcast.
Here’s what happened when I was reading it, though. We learn of all these rumors that the outcast has just gotten out of prison after serving a 30-year murder sentence, which our protagonist Annie refuses to believe, so we know it’s definitely true. We hear said outcast talk, comparing her situation to Annie’s, about having held her baby son all night before he died. And then we discover the only item of note hidden away in her dilapidated shack… her loom.
And maybe it’s only because I read Elizabeth Bunce’s A CURSE DARK AS GOLD last December, or more likely just because I have no associations with looms except those involving either Rumpelstiltskin or early labor battles, but my first thought was: Oh my god, it’s Rumplestiltskin. And how awesome would that be? …A Rumpelstiltskin aftermath book where the baby is taken and the mom gets blamed? Okay, now that I’m writing it down, I can see that it’s slightly crazy. But I was utterly convinced that this is where Hemingway’s story was going, until a few pages later when we got a hint that what had happened was the more predictable backstory that I’m sure everyone reading this can guess even if they haven’t read the book.
So this imaginary novel is such a completely different book than what ROAD TO TATER HILL actually is that it seems unfair to even compare them. Nonetheless, should someone ever write it, it’s a story I’d love to read.
Anyone got a particularly good tale of making a wrong prediction like this? Anyone know of books whose story was generated this way?
Posted in Hemingway, Edith M, Road to Tater Hill
Author:Jeremy Tankard (illustrator)
Rating: 
Reading Level: Pre-k to 2nd
Pages:
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Edition: Hardcover, 2007I LOVE the grumpiness of Bird and his host of 4-legged friends who totally are so clueless to his mood. The Wahaha-WOW ending is so unexpected and satisfying. There is a great momentum building through this seemingly simplistic picture book.
Tankard's thick-black-outlined endearing group of animals and brush-painting trees, accompanied by bleached photo background is dexterously done. There is just so much to look at and such a joy to read aloud and to share!
I guess I’m dense…because I’m not entirely sure what the real backstory is. Well, I mean, I suppose I have a general kind of guess, but I’m not sure I really know.
I like your theory better, to be honest. Someone ought to write THAT book!
Actually, maybe I didn’t give you enough detail in the post to guess what happened, but if you read the book, you’d know early on. But yeah, I don’t want to be the asshole who flagrantly spoils the book on my blog, but if you’re curious I’ll tell you by email. (I’m crazy about spoilers; I won’t even read back blurbs if I’ve already decided to read a book, which contributes to my ability to be wildly off in guessing where a book is going.)
The point, though, is that it’s a really cliched backstory, but I actually don’t hold this against the book at all; it’s a very good book. I wonder how much of my disappointment at it not being Rumpelstiltskin is because that truly would be awesome, and how much is that I liked the idea of being the reader who guessed the completely crazy direction things were going in.
Yeah, if you could e-mail me, that’d be great. [email protected]. I’d like to know.
You know, this is why I always read the back, and read the little blurbs about movies, and ask “what’s it about”? I like to know what I’m reading or watching. Because if I’m expecting one thing and get something completely different, then even if its wonderful I often won’t enjoy it as much, because I’m disappointed or confused or waiting for something that isn’t going to happen.
Its like with food, if I’m expecting one thing and get something completely different, even if its good, its jarring and I won’t enjoy it as much as I could have. I have to prepare my palate.
That just happened to me while reading The Tenderness of Wolves! As I mentioned in my review, I was disappointed that the killer wasn’t as fleshed out as the rest of the characters. From the first chapter of the novel, I imagined a really awesome ending. The main narrator (who finds the body & is the mother of one of the suspects) has flashbacks to her time in an asylum. So I thought the twist at the end would be that she killed the guy cos he was having this Brokeback Mountain affair with her son (it’s set in the 19th century Canadian frontier). But the real ending was far less dramatic.
Dude, we could have a whole website where we write the stories we thought of while reading that didn’t so much happen in the actual book. That would be awesome.
…I mean, I suppose that’s what fan fic sites are for. For some reason in my head this seemed like a cooler idea.
[...] that I am more accountable to my predictions about where a book is going (even when they’re pathetically off base). It was on page 101 of this book that I noted, “I think I had called [character] = gay [...]