A Different Perspective: Fairy Tales!

Our last assignment was to write a fairy tale as a 1st person narrator, representing the "other side" not necessarily represented in the original version!  We had a great time brainstorming main characters, and then the students got quickly and quietly to work story mapping their tale.  When their map got approved, they were set to write the fairy tale, their way.  They had to make sure to maintain a voice that their character would use, including fragments, slang, and sentence length and style to create a believable voice. We also had to decide if the reader would like our character at the end of the tale!

Here is Deven's (entering 6th grade).  I've never quite thought of the Three Little Pigs this way!  Deven wanted the wolf to appear like the kind of character who has just been misunderstood all this time, and who regrets his innocent mistakes.  Did he convince you?  Enjoy this entertaining read!

    Snorty, Goggy, Brainy, and the BIG BAD WOLF

          “Open the door and let me in!” cried the wolf.

          “Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin!” said the little pig.

“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!” roared the wolf.  And he did.  He blew the little straw house into pieces!

UGHH! I can’t bear to recite the story. All these years you naughty children have been brainwashed with the phrase “The Big Bad Wolf” and have been believing every single word of the untruthful story. Well anyway, now that I am telling the story, I’m going to set things straight! Let’s get started.

One beautiful Thanksgiving morning, I leisurely sat up in my bed, stretched, and looked out the window. “What a wonderful day to take a stroll in the woods.” I thought. But first I needed to fill my tummy.

While drinking my coffee, I was thumbing through the newspaper when my eye caught attention to three ads on the bottom first page. Each asked for a house sitter. One house for the morning, one for the afternoon and one for the evening. “Who would want to housesit someone’s home?” I thought. On the bottom of each ad it said FOOD SERVED. After calling each home, I was out in a flash.

Approaching the first home, I saw it was a small one story place. A note tacked to the door said:

“Taking bath in hot tub. I will be leaving soon. Please keep the home clean. Help yourself to food.”                         - Snorty

          “Snorty?” I thought, “What kind of name is that?” I open the door and “Whoa!” I shouted. The house looked like a dump! Chairs were turned over, clothes were all over the floor, and there wasn’t even one square inch for standing! Cautiously, I walked around and reorganized the whole home. Phew! It looked much better afterwards. There was just one room that I didn’t check the state of: the bathroom.

            The first thing I saw was pork soup. Yup. And it looked so…. MOUTHWATERING! I mean, like, soup cooking in the bathroom! You could eat in the shower! Not wasting a second, I quickly drank the soup, which tasted very much like soap water, gobbled down the pork, and smacked my lips. “Delicious!” I thought to myself. I thought I heard a pig shriek, but maybe I got too overwhelmed with the pork.

            After washing up the bathroom, I went off to find “Snorty” He didn’t seem to be home, so I took his wallet and headed off to the second house. What? All he had was  ten dollars and a coupon for chin shaving.

            The second home was a little bigger, a two-story home, but no note was attached to the door. I guessed I had to do the same thing and walked in. One step in and I felt totally relieved. Okay, it wasn’t spik and span, but much neater. My guess was that the man was very obese. All the sofas and couches were rumpled and it looked like a cow had just jumped on it like it was a trampoline. Seriously. Anyway, I started to smoothen out the furniture and vacuum the floor (lots of cookie crumbs) when my eye caught something round and pink on the table. “Is that a pig?” I questioned myself as I continued to work. After a few seconds, I couldn’t resist not eating it. Dashing toward the table, I gobbled the pig whole and washed it down with apple juice. “This owner sure does set out good food for me!” I thought to myself. “What a delicious Thanksgiving lunch!” I said, my tummy satisfied. “Wonder what I’ll get for dinner?” I wondered as I headed toward the final house, not knowing what awaited me.

            When I saw this guy’s home, I’m sorry, MANSION, I was in total awe. Seriously! The home had a HUGE front yard with a fountain in the center, and three sports cars in the driveway. I had better be a careful house sitter or I’d be punished badly. As soon as I walked down the steps, the vast door automatically opened. “Impressive!” I said as I walked in. Suddenly, a robot walked up to me and handed me a list of chores. Not wasting any time, I got started. Vacuuming all three floors, cleaning the shutters, smoothening the furniture, and mopping the kitchen floor. “Done?” someone asked behind me.

            “Ahhh! Who’s there?” I shouted as I whipped around. A muscular man in overalls was facing me with a grin on his face.

            “I think you deserve some relaxation Mr. Wolf,” he stated, “Let’s go to the sauna,” I was in total LUCK! Sitting in a sauna in somebody’s MANSION!

            “Sure!” I said following him to his…….kitchen? I thought it was a kitchen.

     “Get in!” he said with a grin all over his face. I slowly stepped inside and the man closed and locked the door. At least I thought it was a door. “Now for my sweet revenge!” the man shouted, starting to turn a dial outside the sauna.

“Wha… Wha.. What sweet revenge?” I asked the man in a scared voice.

            “Why, for killing my brothers!” he shouted, red in the face.

          “You’re a pig?” I questioned him, confused.

          “Of course!” he said taking off his overalls. “I’m in disguise!” He started to turn the dial more and more until he couldn’t anymore. Realizing I was in an oven, I started to panic. I thought I would faint from heat….

My eyes fluttered open, and I found myself in a dark hollow…..tummy. Remembering the last seconds of my life, I started to feel regretful for my bad actions and deeds. I should have been more careful with my life and controlled my reaction to pork. “Oohhhh! Yummy pork!” I said taking a big chunk out of the tummy. “EWWWW. Raw pork!” I squirmed.                                                                        

OKAAAY. I’ve got A LOT to work on.

             
Here is Melissa's (entering 6th grade).  I love her humor and how she makes us see Grumpy in a whole new light.   I also love her use of strong verbs as well as her fabulous vocabulary.  Enjoy!

Grumpy and the Six Dwarves

I'm Grumpy, the most disagreeable dwarf around.  Many a dwarf have asked how I could live being so grouchy all the time, but I have learned over the years that grumpiness leads to being alone. And that is exactly what I want.

At first I considered living by myself, but believe me, solitary hermit dwarves do not survive very well on their own.

So, I was stuck with six other jolly, sneezing, sleepy dwarfs. Well, at least THAT's better that being stalked by dwarf-eating predators. In our safe, protected environment, life was pretty boring. The interesting things were yet to come...

Dopey seems to be the only dwarf who truly understands me. He's mute. As a result, we invented sign language- yes, it was us- and we signal each other.

"Strange smell in woods," he motioned while we were eating dinner.

"Strong perfume," I muttered under my breath.

"What about strong perfume?" asked Doc, the head of our gang, and truth to be told, a pretty bossy leader.  "Whatever. Go investigate yourself."  When we stayed frozen in our places, he demanded, "Go!!!"

See what I mean?  He really abuses his power.

So we trudged off into the forest, and after a couple of hours we heard something strange. Humming? Whistling, or chanting? No- Chanting.

The perfume scent then smelled more pungent than sweet, and was almost overwhelming as a strange, witch-like woman began her eerie chant:

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all???" The mirror then replied that some girl named Snow White was the fairest. Then apparently mistaking ME for Snow White, the Queen then lunged forward and grabbed me by the neck!

"Ouch!" I cried. "That hurt!" Dopey watched reproachfully as I was dragged toward an open clearing.

“Aha! I caught you! You evil, evil, prettier-than-me person. I’ll have to kill you –.“  She glanced down at me – for the first time -, clearly taken aback. “Wait, you’re not Snow White at all!” she screamed furiously. “In fact, you’re very ugly. Super ugly! So super ugly that you’ll just have to get out of my sight!”

I gladly obeyed, and scampered off back to Dopey. But he wasn’t there – he must have ditched me. Perhaps he wasn’t so understanding after all. And then I was lost, because I depended on him for navigating. It didn’t help matters when the queen called out, “Your ugliness is making me more ugly! into the woods.

We dwarves have excellent senses, so I decided to use that to help me. Using my sharp eyesight, I determined that there was smoke about half a mile away. It was worth a shot.

After about five minutes of walking, I was there. I knocked on the door. It swung open, almost hitting me in the face.

“Hi, I’m Grumpy,” I said gruffly.

“I’m Snow White,” she said.

“Well, you should probably get out of here. The evil queen is trying to kill you so she can be the fairest in the land. You can come to our place. All you’ll have to do is the housework.” Our place was really messy.

Together, we somehow found our way back home. Everything looked normal, but I saw something strange behind the bushes. I didn’t have time to think about it though.

“All right, dwarves. Time to go wood chopping!” Normally this was the time when I would slink back into the house and skip the activity, but this time I thought, “What if Snow White asks me to help with the cleaning?” Even worse than shouting ‘Heave, ho, heave ho,’ with a bunch of dwarves.” So, I went.

When we came back – gasp – Snow White was on the floor, unconscious! And with angry shock, I realized that THE QUEEN was the one behind the bushes! She must have poisoned Snow White. And sure enough, there was a half-eaten apple on the ground.

After plenty of shaking and squeezing and even an attempt at CPR, Snow White finally blinked, twitched, and woke up.

“We’ve got to get back at that queen!” Doc said.

“Yeah,” said Sneezy, another dwarf. “ACHOO! If Snow White had died, who would do the housekeeping?”

Snow White didn’t look terribly pleased to be thought of in that way. Dwarves can be so shallow.

Doc came up with a plan: to dig a huge hole and force the evil queen to run into it. “That way it will be like an underground prison,” he said.

For a good five hours we dug, perspired, and persevered. We plopped a small folding bed, a table and chair, and an oil lamp into the gloomy pit for a final touch. Showtime.

We followed the queen’s high-heeled footsteps to her house, and crept quietly up to her doorway. We knocked.

“Hello?” the queen said in a high, shrill voice. “Oh it’s you, ugly dwarves??”  She screamed as we sprinted towards her in pursuit. The evil queen dashed off and we followed, forming a circle around her with a tiny opening, forcing her to run towards the pit.

Then she screamed again – not for the last time – when she fell down, down, down…

“I hope you remembered to bring your makeup!” I shouted. Happy endings are always the best.