Reading Notes: Turkish Fairy Tales, Reading B

    This week I decided to read the Turkish Fairy Tales unit. All of the stories from Reading B are from Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos. This is another unit that I really enjoyed because each of the stories were fascinating in their own ways. However, I found that I did not like as many stories from Reading B as I did from Reading A.

    The first story that I enjoyed was the Patience-Stone and Patience-Knife story. It was a fascinating tale about a maiden who was approached by a bird. The bird had told the maiden that her fate was in a dead person. The dead person turned out to be a prince, who I assumed was just unconscious. That part of the story could have been a bit clearer. Anyway, there was some trickery in the story which caused the maiden to almost take her life, but the prince saved her, and as usual they lived happily ever after. 

    The other story that I enjoyed was The Wizard and his Pupil. This story was full of magic and suspense. I have realized that I like the stories where the characters can turn themselves into animals or other objects. I have also come to realize that in most of the stories I have read, the wizards are always evil. I wish some of them could be good wizards or have a character development where they become good. However, in this story, it worked that wizard was evil because he was trying to kill his apprentice, but his apprentice ended up killing him, and as usual they lived happily ever after.

    I was not fond of the story Kunterbunt, or Higgledy-Piggledy. However, in the story all of this terrible stuff is happening to him and then he wakes up and realizes it was just a dream. I like the idea of that type of suspense, and I am in a way incorporating that into my story. The difference is in my story the characters’ dreams help them solve their case rather than bad stuff happening to them.

    The stigma of all fairy tales having a happy ending needs to be trashed. Yes, it's devastating when your favorite character, or the protagonist dies or doesn't get their way, but it creates this idea that everyone gets a happy ending. This is real life and most of the time that doesn't happen, so I wish for more non happy endings. Non happy endings provide more of a shock factor rather than an of course they lived happily ever factor.

Maiden and Bird from the Patience-Stone and Patience-Knife Story