Outreach Storytime, Fractured Fairytales-Three Little Pigs

I took the format from last month and ran with it, the school-age kids seem to enjoy the fractured versions of their favorite tales.

I made craft stick puppets and had several 2nd grade volunteers help me tell the original story. Then we talked about what we could do to make the story different. I introduced words like protagonist, antagonist and point of view to determine who was telling the tale, and who is telling which tale.

Book:

We discussed the wolf's point of view and how different characters can see the same situation in different ways (I am still trying to come up with a great way to tie this into the topic of bullying, but I am drawing a blank so far.) We did discuss the actions that the pigs or the wolf could take to be a better friend.

Book:

I love the rhymes in this book. And Dan Santat is my hero-his picture book The Adventures of Beekle is the 2015 Caldecott Award winner. We discussed the similarities and differences between each book and the original story and made a triple Venn diagram on giant post-it note posters.

Outreach Storytime, Fractured Fairytales-Cinderella

I do a joint K-1-2 storytime once a month, usually the 3 classes equal about 50 kids. We meet in the hallway between the gym and the rear entrance to the school (not my choice, it is freezing!). While this is not ideal, the kids are fantastic. This year I wanted to focus on comparing and contrasting skills, so we stared with discussing the Cinderella story. We talked about characters and basic plot. Then we read Cinderella's Rat by Susan Meddaugh.


We discussed how the story and characters were different from the Cinderella story we told at the beginning. This led to a quick discussion about multiple viewpoints.

I brought out the giant post-it note pad and tried to play the ABC animals game (naming an animal that starts with each letter of the alphabet), but some of the older kids got a little too rowdy, so we didn't get to finish.

We moved into reading Seriously, Cinderella is so Annoying by Trisha Shaskan.



We talked about how different characters had different viewpoints and how a single story can be distorted depending on who is telling it.

We ran out of time before I could tell the 'piece de resistance'- the tale of Rindercella. I was introduced to this story by a worship leader in college who would tell this story at the beginning of every year to get a few laughs and introduce himself. The origins of this story come from Matthew Goldman, and is called a spoonerism tale; many of the first letters of words are mixed up. It is difficult to read, but so exciting to say out loud. It is by far my favorite story to tell with the school-age kids (I think I tell it at least once a year).