The Great River

Once upon a time the North wind whipped, whirled and swirled. The snow fell here, there and everywhere. The Great Wind thought to himself, how can I use this snow, what can I create? He took his mighty gusts and swirled up into the air to create gigantic pillars of ice and snow, a coliseum of glacier,  and cobblestones of crushed ice. The Great North Wind moved across his creation, flowing within the corridors and pathways, streets and alleys of his ice village, cutting out great archways. He created great sheets of ice like large mosaics on his pillars.

The Great Wind thought to himself, this is my creation, there should be a great monument  to my greatness. So he finds himself the brightest white purest snow and clearest of ice and he set upon creating a monument unto himself.

The Great Wind, while building his giant monument, which was much larger than his village, took so much time and effort, he lost track of time. Spring was suddenly looming around the corner. The trees in the ice village, ever so slowly began to bud. The buds were so minuscule and tiny that the great wind did not even see them.  Little blades of grass began pushing through the ice-mortar between the cobblestones of his city streets, again so very tiny, it did not arouse his suspicions as he was crafting his giant structure. The North Wind was still whirling and swirling with a great fervor, so much so that he didn’t realize that spring had begun to creep along his corridors and pathways.

As the North Wind was putting his finishing touches on his great monument, spring was slowly eroding all that he had created. The great pillars had slumped, the mosaics had dripped, his entire city now lay in a puddle upon the ground.  He was oblivious to his ice village’s demise. He stepped back to look at his magnificent monument and felt spring’s warmth tapping him on the shoulder. He turned with a gasp as he saw his hard work begin to run southward. His ice, now water cut pathways through the land. He knew his time for this year was up, once again spring was here.

Spring, not to be out done, now looked upon her creation, the Mississippi River with great pride. She thanked the North Wind, telling him to take a long vacation.

This Myth fits with many myths as it has an explanation for creating something that happens in nature, the creation of a river. It also has another theme common in myths which is the use of a God-like character.

Reader's Sketch

Megan Burns

Children’s Literature, Spring 2012

Reader’s Sketch- Rough Draft

January 20, 2012

Oh, The Books I’ve Read

Kindergarten

When I was in kindergarten, I remember our class going to the school library once a week. For some reason, I can see myself crawling on the floor looking at the books on the lowest shelf. One girl, Tonya, found this amazing book. It had very colorful pictures, fruit I had never heard of or seen before and the most beautiful butterfly I have ever seen. After Tonya found this book, we would fight over who got to check it out the next week. We would all cram together in a corner of the classroom and pretend like we were eating the chocolate cake and those crazy looking purple things, which turned out to be plums.

I had forgotten all about the routine we had in kindergarten until a few years ago when I was working in an elementary school and I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to the students. The kids were so engrossed with the book and how much the caterpillar could eat in one week! I turned the book into a felt story for those kids too, so they could each hold a piece and then come up and put it on the board when it was eaten by the caterpillar. It really reminded me of the great times I shared with my classmates.

Make Your Own Book

The elementary school I attended had some cool fairs during the year. One of those fairs was the student book fair. Each year, students in grades 1-6 would write their own books. They went through several drafts, depending on the grade, I vividly remember writing my book in first grade, Tippy the Dog. We had to create our own story, it couldn’t be something that really happened, so mine was about a dog who ran away but then the neighbor girl returned him later in the day, really creative, I know.

The best part about writing these books was that we got to choose a pretty fabric which would eventually become the cover of the book. At the end of several weeks of working on our books was the fair. All of the books were lined up on tables according to grade and we would all come with our parents and look at everyone’s books. I, of course, always thought mine was the best. I am pretty sure my parents still have all of the books my brother and I wrote, as I am sure most parents from my school do.

Miss Pfeifer’s Class

I was in a split class for third and fourth grade, both with the same teacher, Miss Pfeifer. She was my favorite teacher of all time. Her classroom was all about trying new things and working independently. She would sign up to get new manipulative to use in math before they were out on the teaching market, she had us make our own paper in science and she had several bean bags in the room for us to lounge on while reading.

Everyday, we had about 20 minutes of Silent Sustained Reading, SSR. We would pick out any book we wanted from the library, as long as we sat quietly during the SSR time. If you had a really good day up to that point, she would randomly choose people to read in the bean bag chairs. That was the best! I really think that helped to  create a mood for reading, instead of sitting in the cramped school desks. There were rugs and lamps, it was like our own little living room.

I can remember reading my first choose your own adventure books during those grades. My friends and I would each read the same books and compare the stories we chose. Sometimes we would have vastly different outcomes to our books and sometimes they would be the same, it was so fun! We would have to write book reports, which you could not have the same book as another student, but it was ok if it was choose your own adventure, because they would end so differently. Those books were the first time I realized that your really could get “lost” in a book.

High School

I think when I was in high school, that was really the first time I started really reading for enjoyment. We were assigned books to read, but when I was in ninth grade, my English teacher let us pick our own books for the semester to read and do reports on. I chose The Lord of the Rings. My mother owned all of the books from the 70’s so they had black fabric covers on them, I felt really cool reading such old books. I think the movies were starting to be made at that time, so I wanted to finish them before they came out.

When I read those books, I was literally taken into another time. The way J.R.R. Tolkien writes is so descriptive that I felt like I could smell the food and the earth. When they would have parties, I could visualize the fireworks and the dances going on. It was a really great experience reading those books.

Adulthood

I didn’t read many good books for a while there. Then one day, a friend recommended the Outlander series. Her description of it sounded ridiculous, “historical romance with time travel”. I picked up the first of seven books at the library, it was huge. I read a little way in and really didn’t like it. Then something happened and I became very engrossed in the book. Now, about two years later, I have read all seven books and I cannot wait until the eighth and final one come out in 2013.

Ms. Gabaldon really makes you relate to the characters. She does so much research for her books it is amazing. I took a history class last semester and when they would talk about medicine in the United States from the 1700’s it sounded so far-fetched to most people, but I had read about it in a fictional book that made it seem so real. I would listen to the books on cd from time to time and when I would go to work or school, I would think to myself, “what is Jamie Fraser doing right now?”. That is how I knew I was reading a good book that would stick with me for a long time.

Books written in blood

  After reading both assigned articles for my Children's Literature class I have decided that I do indeed agree with one of them more than the other.

 In the first article I read, Darkness Too Visible, by Meghan Cox Gurdon, she talks about how disgusted parents are with what is available to teens and kids at the bookstore. People think the children are going to somehow be influenced by the actions in the books. In the second article, Why the Best Kids Books are Written in Blood, by Sherman Alexie, he talks about the book he wrote about his own tragic life and how it  has been read by so many teens and how they respond to it.

 Alexie says, “There are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged. They read because the live in an often-terrible world.” In my own personal experience of working at an elementary school in the Minneapolis Public School system, I know that this is true. There are SO many worse things these kids have seen and been through that reading about vampires and dark things is actually a welcome escape. Are they going to go out and become vampires? No. Might they have a new obsession with vampires, probably, but I think that is ok.

 In one of my college classes, we had a guest speaker, she told us that her teenage daughter wanted to read some vampire books, she didn’t think it was appropriate. After a while her daughter asked her what she could do to change her mind about the books, the mother said, you have to write me a summary after each chapter. So, the daughter got to read the books and the mother found out that they weren’t so bad after all, she even began to read them. I just think this is a great example of engaging students and children in what they are reading, whether it is Stephen King or Beverly Cleary, the important thing is that they are interested in reading and we should nurture it in any way we can.