Chapter 6 Discussion

Traditional literature is text that is mostly fiction stories that consist of plots, settings, characters, themes, and styles. The traditional literature story line has a beginning, middle, and end. It is contains such a broad number of seletions that includes myths, fairy tales, folk tales, myths, legends, and nursery rhymes. Most of these stories are easy to follow and have have predictable outcomes. Traditional literature is used to explain many things and from many of the ones that I have read are stories that are trying to teach the readers valuable lessons.

Some of my favorites include "The Three Little Pigs", "A Christmas Carol", "Curious George", "Princess and the Pea", and "Cinderella". Many for the stories that are made for younger generations are those with a "happily ever after" ending mainly due to preserving the innocence and belief of hope in children. Many of these stories are old stories that originated by a person or people and were mainly stories that were put down in words after years of being passed around by mouth. The problem with this is, from story telling to story telling, the aspects of the stories can change and alter far from the original. Just take the game known as "Telephone". One person starts off and passes a sentence or phrase to the next person and then that person tells the next person and so on. By the time the last person repeats what he/she heard, it can be totally different from what the original person said. Once they have been put into writing, then it tends to stay in the norm range of what is written. However there are books that are written that are an exaggerated version or an alternate view from a story that is an original. An example of this is Jon Scieszka's "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs". It tells the story of the wolf and how actually he wasn't mean and vicious and how everyone got it wrong. These books are fun to read, expecially if you love the original. Little twists and changes can alter the way you look at a story.

When I start teaching, I plan on integrating both the original, well known classics in my classroom for students to be free to look at. I also want to incorporate some of the twists and some not so known readings into my curriculum, broadening the knowledge of my students and introducing them to something new. It will give them a chance to explore different situations and perhaps learn new lessons.