” You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you.” pg 313

Jake and Mimi, I absolutely love this line! Touches me deep. Hope you both like the ending as much as I did. I am starting The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian! :) Can’t wait to keep discussing the books!

In chapter one it talks about the importance of dedicating time to reading each day, addressing the “fake readers”, etc. Well that was me… for many reasons. Pretty much the whole time I was reading chapter one I felt like they were picking me apart as a child. I feel for the students that struggle like I did because it is awful. I hated the feeling of not understanding what I was reading (I say hated… this still happens all the time). I am such a hands on person and everything has to be so real for me to understand what is happening that I have always struggled with reading and having to imagine in my head what is happening. You could say I am not the most creative person out there. I can’t see what is actually taking place in books and this is hard for me.

When I had free time in class to read I struggled to stay focused because often times the books my teachers would recommended me didn’t interest me at all, but more often then that, I had the hardest time actually paying attention to what I was reading. I would try so hard to read and take it in, but I would find myself reading the words and feeling accomplished for reading the words, but at the end of the sentence I would have no clue what I had just read, but let me tell you I read every word correctly… and I was very happy I could do that. My mind goes many directions while I read… thinking about every medical bill I need to figure out how to pay from my moms battle to how I am going to raise my sisters while at school to “oh ya I need to send money for their school lunches this month” to I should be studying for my midterm. I don’t know reading is just extremely hard for me.

I am very worried about that as I go into the classroom, but I in no way, shape or form want my students to go through the same struggle I have with reading. I think it takes a special kind of guidance and support to become a wild reader and I know it is so important to develop that with my students, but as someone who struggles myself to make it through a book and actually understand what is happening will I be able to get my students to be wild readers? But I also think of this as kind of a place for me to start over. I am going to be teaching elementary school students, and yes many of them can read far better then me right now, but they don’t know that and this gives me a chance to widen my knowledge and find the love for reading that I should have as a teacher. I know it is doable, which is exciting, its just going to take a lot of work.

My favorite was The Tale of the Rose. I have never read the original fairy tales, but this one really caught my attention. I can not believe that a father would stick to his promise so much that he would give his own daughter away to an awful looking beast. Then for that beast to be a woman was a huge turn events and one that I don’t think fairy tales usually do. I think all of the stories can capture the situation of women today, it just depends how you look into it. The Tale of the Bird if you are a women that feels trapped. The Tale of the Brother if you feel like women always get less then men. They are all about choosing your path in the world and I feel like women are faced with this decision daily.

I think the author chose to title the book Kissing the Witch because all of her fairy tales are kind of in the “unexpected” category. The women don’t rely on men like they are usually made out to do and they are able to take care for their own problems and the beast was even a women. I think it was very unexpected to kiss a witch so just like her whole book the title would follow the lead of unexpected things.

 

I have never watched snow white before so it was all pretty new to me. However, I have heard about the little dwarfs and how they help snow white before and how beautiful she was.

So I am not sure what parts are different in the Walt Disney’s version, but the parts that surprised me was how evil the step mom was made out to be. She kept coming up with evil plan after evil plan to kill her innocent step daughter, all because her mirror, which could talk (weird), told her she was more beautiful. This part of the story really hit home for me because I went through a kind of similar situation at home this summer. My dad was recently engaged and with that came an evil stepmother to be. When I went home for the summer, like I have every year to work on our ranch she told me that “She could tell that my dad and I used to be very good friends and that was not how it was going to be anymore” and shortly after kicked me out of my own house that I had grown up in because they had talked and didn’t need two headwomen in the house anymore. So the jealous aspect of the stepmother is so true. However, I couldn’t believe that the stepmother hired a huntsman to kill Snow White and bring her liver and lungs so she could eat them. For being a children’s fairytale this really surprised me because it seemed so gory, but I was relieved when the huntsman and her made a deal and she was able to run away. When she made it to the dwarfs house and she drank some from each little cup and ate some from each little plate and used a little fork, and slept in all of the little beds, etc I thought that was kind of a weird lesson to teach kids because she just went on in and made herself welcome in a house that she had never been to and didn’t even know the people that lived there. Seems like it could be a little unsafe. The last part that surprised me was that Snow White was awakened by the piece of apple coming free from her throat when the prince stumbled or something. I thought just from different conversations that I caught about Snow White that she was awakened with a kiss and that seems like it would be more of a love story then her prince tripping and the apple coming free.

I felt like a theme of this story was that the evil stepmother is always out to get her stepchildren. (SO TRUE) Another theme is that you have to be “white as snow” to be as beautiful as Snow White with blood red lips and dark hair and you have to run away from the evil stepmother until your prince can save you.