Extra Reading Diary: Brothers Grimm (Ashliman) Unit

For Week 4, I chose to read another Grimm Brothers unit, specifically the Grimm Ashliman unit.  The half of the unit that I read was very entertaining, but not particularly useful for my potential storybook project.  Most of the stories were tales of animals and animal villains.  There were a few stories that I could potentially twist for my purposes, but I’m not sure right now.  I’ll definitely have to think about it. 

I found it interesting that the stories of Little Red Cap and The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids were so similar.  Of course the wolf was the villain who devoured people or an animal’s children, but they were taken care of in the exact same way.  When someone discovered what the wolf had done, they cut the wolf open to discover that the people were alive and well, then they filled the wolf’s belly with stones.  I thought that was rather different: the same story told with slightly different characters.

Yawning Wolf. Source: Wikimedia

The Singing Bone was a fantastic story in my opinion.  I would like to try to come up with some way to work it into my storybook, although it would definitely take some work.  I liked that one brother was killed by his envious brother and that his bones sang the tale of his death.  It was definitely unique for me.

I also like the story of Rumpelstiltskin.  It would be a lot of fun to work this one into my storybook.  I’m not sure how I would do it exactly, but it is a good fit for my idea for My Brothers Grimm.  I might use it as my first story so that I have an easy story to work out the kinks with, then work in the tales that would require a little more creativity.