Happily Ever after - Sharing Folk Literature with Elementary and Middle School Students FROM THE PUBLISHER
Anansi, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, and the Three Little Pigs are just a few of the beloved characters whose stories have been shared for generations. Their adventures, rooted in the oral storytelling tradition, have been recorded as folk literature in every corner of the world.
Because folk literature represents a large portion of the trade books published for children and young adults, elementary and middle school teachers and librarians need a resource to help them understand and use this genre with students. Happily Ever After: Sharing Folk Literature With Elementary and Middle School Students defines folk literature and provides ideas for teaching it, making it not only a practical resource for classroom teachers and librarians but also an appropriate textbook for teacher education courses.
The book is divided into four sections. Section one provides an overview of traditional literature. Section two examines the subgenres of folk literature, helping readers to better understand folk tales and fairy tales, fables, myths, legends, and tall tales. Section three deals with traditional literature across cultures and includes thought-provoking chapters dealing with African, Asian, European, Jewish, Latino, Middle Eastern and South Asian, and Native American folk literature. Section four looks at how teachers might use folk literature in their classrooms through drama, writing, comparing versions and variants of a single tale type, and collecting oral folklore and adapting it to the written form. Throughout the chapters, authors show how folk literature can extend students' literacy and love of reading through a range of classroom applications spanning the full range of the language arts.
This book will be a valuable resource to guide teachers, librarians, and students in experiencing the "happily ever after" magic found in folk literature.
FROM THE CRITICS
School Library Journal
Folk literature is an important component in today's curriculum, not just for its literary merits but for its ability to expose youngsters to a variety of cultures and a diversity of beliefs and lifestyles. This collaborative effort from a group of professors, storytellers, editors, school-media specialists, and authors/folklorists brings together a complete overview of the genre. The book begins with a good guide to the subgenres within the folk-literature category. Explanations, literary criticisms, and examples are given for folktales, fables, mythology, legends, and tall tales in six detailed chapters. Next, stories from a wide range of cultures are explored. An entire section is devoted to "Cinderella" and its numerous variants. Throughout the book is a wealth of classroom applications, ideas, and suggestions for interpretation outlined in the form of lesson plans, writing exercises, art projects, role playing/dramatization, and the integration of social- and global-studies units. It concludes with discussions of the validity of studying and evaluating transformed fairy- and folktales such as the fractured and twisted tale, and of exploring the timeliness and timelessness of folk literature through an evaluation of "Rumpelstiltskin" from the original Brothers Grimm to Diane Stanley's rendition. This well-written, broad approach to folk literature will be suited to not just educators and classroom teachers, but to children's literature devotees as well.-Rita Soltan, Oakland University, Rochester, MI Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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