For my final week of reading I choose to pick an author I
have become very familiar with from the readings in this class. I should not
have been surprised to find that Joseph Jacobs had written another book for the
European reading unit. The book is called Europa’s Fairy Book and consists of
five stories for the first part. What I really enjoyed was getting to hear some
Disney classics, like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast from a different
(probably the original) storyline. In the story Cinder-Maid, I liked how instead of a fairy godmother helping Cinderella
out, it was a tree and a bird that her mother had been buried under. It gave a
little more of a connection to the mother. I also was surprised that Cinderella
father did not die in the story. Instead he just seemed to let the step-mother
and two step-daughter treat her poorly and did nothing to help her or stop
them. A different perspective could be told of what the mother thinks when she
is up in heaven watching after her daughter and trying to help her out. I think
she would be very cross with her husband and maybe plan to get Cinderella away
from all of them. I really enjoyed the last story, The Earl of Cattenborough. In the story, the youngest son gets the
family cat when he parents die and the cat takes very good care of him. The cat
is able to help Jack convince the King that he is a noble with his own castle
and land so that the King marries his daughter off to him. What I am curious
about in the story is why the cat was so helpful to the youngest son. Did his
parents tell the cat to make sure and take very good care of him? Did Jack
treat the cat so well when he was younger that the cat felt that he owned
something to Jack? These questions could be answered in a story that was a
prequel to The Earl of Cattenborough.
A black cat in a meadow. For some reason black cats have always been my favorite and this is how I pictured the cat in the last story. Source: Wikipedia by Colleen Martin
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