Puss n' Boots, Br'er rabbit, and Anansi- How Anansi gets ownership of all the stories

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France:
Puss n' boot
Megan and I read these three stories, discussing cunning, clever , wit and what exactly is a fairytale. She had no idea about what a fairytale, but knew some about what it is to be cunning and clever.  In Puss n' boot, 
a guy is left a cat for his inheritance but this is no ordinary cat.  First he can talk and understand people. Second, he is very cunning and clever.   He first caught lots of animals that can be eaten for food and gave them to the King of the land saying these are from the Lordship Marquis De Carabas. He does this for a while to get the King to really  know this Lord and to like him. Then, he has the boy pretend drowning in the river and then hides his clothes. He does this knowing the King is going to come by at any moment. When he does, he tells the King the Lordship Marquis of Carabas is drowning and that someone stole his clothes.  The King has his men get him out and has his best tailors get him a really nice suit. Then, the cat goes ahead to all the lands and tells the people if they do not say this land is owned by the Lordship Marquis of Carabas, they will all be turned into sausagemeat.  Afraid of this, the people listened. The cat goes to the castle of a big ogre who owns the castle and all the land and tricks him. He is able to change forms and so he first turns into a Lion and the cat is frightened. But, he then tells the ogre, after he changes back, that he can not change into something really tiny, say a rat or a mouse. He proves it to him that he can and when he does, he is eaten.  When the king sees how much land this Lordship owns and his castle at the end, he tells the Lordship Marquis of Carabas, he can marry his daughter if he wishes. And so he marries her.

Br'er Rabbit gets Br'er Fox's food - Southern states of America
In Br'er Rabbit, the Rabbit wants Br'er fox's food, but is not sure how to get it. He sees him hammering nails into his roof and so he goes up and pretends he is truly helping him and hammers like crazy. It sounds like he is avoiding the fox's tail, but in the end, he nails it down.  Then, he starts acting like he feels bad about it as he climbs down the ladder and goes to eat his food.

West African tales
In Anansi, this is a tricky , clever , cunning spider needs to capture three things in order to please the sun god and get ownership of all the stories. He tricks the hornets, the python and the leopard and , as a result, gets the right to owner ship of all stories.  After this, Megan wrote up a sheet with a description of the spider and two things he does.   She drew a picture of the spider. At the top, She writes the character and the Title of the story.  Then, she is going to hide the top with construction paper and one has to guess what story she is taking about with her clues. 

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This page contains a single entry by Julie Wang published on June 15, 2013 2:59 PM.

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