All the Cinderellas

For our last little peek behind the pages of the fairy tales in our current exhibit, Once Upon a Time, we’d like to celebrate one of the best-known of them: Cinderella! The beauty with the special slipper has a very, very long lineage. Stories about her, or women very much like her, have been traced back hundreds of years, to China, Greece, and Egypt.

The Greek-Egyptian version of Cinderella is most likely the earliest, although it lacks many of the elements that are more familiar to us from the European-derived stories of the 1700s. In this tale, the heroine is named Rhodopis, and she was one of many servants of a Greek businessman and politician named Xanthes. He had taken a party to Egypt for business, and Rhodopis, bathing in a spring, had one of her slippers snatched up by an eagle, who then dropped it in the lap of the King of Egypt. The king took this as a sign from the heavens and searched everywhere for the slipper’s owner. Rhodopis, also known as Rhodope and as Doricha, was most likely a real woman, a courtesan (or “hetaera”) who lived about 2600 years ago, but the story about the shoe was probably a tall tale, and we can thank her contemporary, Aesop, for that.

More than a thousand years later, the popular tale had made its way to China. Tuan Ch’êng-shih wrote of a heroine named Yeh-Shen, and her story is closer to the version that we know. Yeh-Shen longs for happiness and marriage since her stepmother is so cruel, and she has some supernatural help from a magical fish who grants her wishes. Yeh-Shen attends a ball wearing a beautiful dress and slippers made of gold, and leaves one behind, in the hands of a charming king, when her allotted time expires.

Yeh-Shen and Rhodopis stories continued to be told, with different names, as the centuries passed, with dozens more iterations than we have room to discuss here. In 1697, Charles Perrault’s version, “Cendrillon,” was published, and it’s pretty much the final form that we know it today. Earlier European versions had replaced the magical benefactor with a kind godmother, but Perrault made her a fairy godmother for the first time. She transforms a pumpkin into a carriage, makes the slippers from glass, turns mice into horses, and so on. Basically all the elements of Cinderella that we all recognize are present in Perrault’s version, which has as strong a claim as any to being the most popular of all fairy tales.

Perrault’s was not the final version, of course, because as we’ve discussed, fairy tales are always changing and evolving. In recent years, Hollywood movies like Snow White and the Huntsman and Maleficent have given classic fairy tales a darker edge, but the Cinderella story was taking on heavier overtones quite early on. In 1812, the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, published their seminal collection of European tales, and the Cinderella version that they included, entitled “Aschenputtel,” is much darker than Perrault’s and all the variants that followed it.

What interests me about Cinderella, though, is that the bleak overtones that some writers and folklorists have added to the story don’t actually seem to stick. As we noted in the first of these features, about Jack and the Beanstalk, many fairy tales actually thrive with a little color and backstory and discussion of motivations, even if it’s sometimes darker. Cinderella, however, shrugs off anybody’s attempts to darken it. Perhaps because the core of the story is so bright and happy, and its tale of wish-fulfillment is so encouraging and promising, that darkness just doesn’t belong to it. Cinderella is arguably the most popular fairy tale in the world, and the happiest.

Further reading: Lit Reactor | readyed.com.au | popsugar.com

First Lady of Atlanta Helps Kick Off Mayor’s Summer Reading Club

It’s summer, and one of the great things about summer in Atlanta is the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club. We’re happy to once again be a partner, and a host for their kickoff event. The fun starts at 10am this Saturday morning, and we’ll have readings and crafts all day long! Plus, a special reading by First Lady of Atlanta Sarah-Elizabeth L. Reed and other special guests.

At the Museum, our staff works hard to promote literacy, because the studies show that many children don’t read and exercise their mental muscles during the summer months as much as they do when school’s in session, meaning that they will start the next grade a few weeks or months behind, and often struggle to catch up. We hope that all parents will participate in combating summer reading loss, and keep kids engaged in books.

So, where does the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club come in? Well, from their site, “The program designates a city- wide book choice for infants, for children ages 2-4, and for children ages 5-8 to share with families at no cost to them. Throughout the summer, libraries, museums, farmers’ markets, and other institutions in Atlanta will hold “book club reads” to model research based methods of reading books with children and will host enrichment events based upon the stories. The books will come to life as children enjoy arts and crafts activities, drama exercises, and other hands on activities designed to make the language in the stories meaningful to children.”

“The Mayor’s Summer Reading Club has helped thousands of Atlanta’s children and family members improve their literacy skills and ignite their passion for reading,” said Mayor Kasim Reed. “Now in its third year, the program, supported by my administration, valuable partners and Atlanta-based organizations, is increasing its reach, and inspiring more young ones to fall in love with reading. Research shows that children who read during the summer months perform better on achievement testing and are better prepared for the school year. It is my hope that the program continues to grow, and further support one of my top priorities—investing in our city’s children.”

For the third year in a row, the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy at the Atlanta Speech School have written a new adventure starring Amari, our city’s favorite young heroine, for children aged 3-5. In the previous books, Amari has visited Zoo Atlanta and biked on the Atlanta BeltLine. In her newest story, Amari’s Shining Moment, she and her neighbor, Andres, visit the children’s village of the Dogwood Festival and see a performance of “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” inspiring them to recreate the stage and perform the play for their entire neighborhood. Amari uses the skills of problem solving and determination she learned through her first two adventures to help Andres get over his stage fright.

(Say, isn’t that something? “The Shoemaker and the Elves” is one of the fairy tales that are spotlighted in our current featured exhibit, Once Upon a Time!)

The First Lady of Atlanta, Sarah-Elizabeth L. Reed, will be here to share Amari’s adventures to our guests Saturday morning. She will be here to read the book at 11 am. The other books featured for the club this year are, for infants, The Pigeon Has Feelings Too by Mo Willems, and, for readers aged 5-8, Dad, Jackie and Me by Myron Uhlberg and Colin Bootman. Find out more about the books at the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club! All of our guests on Saturday will get to take home books for free! We look forward to seeing you here at the Museum on Saturday.

Schedule of events for Saturday, June 6

• 10 AM : Craft time
• 11 AM : First Lady of Atlanta, Sarah-Elizabeth L. Reed to read Amari’s Shining Moment
• 12 PM : Imaginators bring to life Dad, Jackie and Me by Myron Uhlberg
• 1 PM : Mr. Jason’s Music Party will perform live music to get kids up, movin’ and groovin’!
• 2 PM : New York Times-best-selling children’s author, Surishtha Sehgal reads ‘A Bucket of Blessings’
• 3 PM : Cold cooking demonstration
• 4 PM : Construction Aerobics

All events are included with the price of admission and, as always, members are free.

Fairy Tales Thrive in the Telling

Ask a dozen academics why fairy tales have such staying power and resonance and you’re sure to get a dozen different answers. Folk tales go back centuries, and the details shift and change in the telling. As books became available, and later, films were made to adapt the stories, they took on new details, additional characters, and often songs to pad out the running time. But even before the possibilities of print or animation, the tales that we know and love from our childhood had evolved and changed as the stories moved around different cultural groups.

We’re thinking about legends and folk tales a lot this week because we’re so happy to be welcoming back a really popular exhibit, last seen on the Museum floor in 2011, Once Upon a Time…Exploring the World of Fairy Tales. If you missed it the last time around, you’re in for a treat. From an African jungle to a giant’s castle, this unique and educational exhibit focuses on the power and significance of fairy tales throughout history and from around the world. Children will enter an enchanted storybook kingdom where they’ll learn the meaning and history of tales they’ve known all their lives, and others that may be new to them.

The featured tales are “Anansi and the Talking Melon,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Lon Po Po,” “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” and “Thumbelina.” Over the next few weeks, we will be exploring the origins of all of these fairy tales, starting with “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

“Jack and the Beanstalk” is correctly called an English folk tale, dating to the early 1800s, but the metaphorical “beans” came from all over Europe before the version of the tale that you might find most familiar took “root.” The concept of climbing some kind of plant life to reach an otherwise impossible-to-access realm in the sky is centuries old. Norse mythology considered a gigantic tree called Yggdrasil whose branches were in heaven, as does Buddhist tradition, where it is described as a Bodhi tree. The Book of Genesis offered the tale of Jacob’s Ladder, which also reached heaven. The “Jack and the Beanstalk” section of the exhibit features a small “beanstalk” for children to climb, which is really quite fun. Don’t worry, parents, the beanstalk doesn’t stretch quite so high that your children will vanish into the clouds!

Germanic folklore is positively packed with giants and ogres, most of whom selfishly guard treasure and need to be outwitted or defeated. That makes them the perfect antagonist for a traditional, clever, and sharp-thinking hero. England in the 15th and 16th Century brought us just such a hero in a bright young commoner, typically called Jack, who appeared in dozens of folk tales. (There’s a “house that Jack built,” for example.) Mix in a little Shakespeare – the giant’s traditional warning cry of “Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman” comes almost directly from King Lear – and the basic form of the story is pretty typical of 18th Century folklore from the British Isles.

One of the great things about fairy tales is that despite the usual conclusions like “The end” or “And they all lived happily ever after,” they’re still evolving and adapting, with no end in sight. Jack himself has been replaced in dozens and dozens of adaptations over the last seventy years by everybody from Mickey Mouse to Ernie to Nintendo’s Mario to the casts of The Goodies and The Magic School Bus, and they all bring their own spins to the story, making anybody who remembers the version that they heard or saw then retell it differently to their own children. How many trips did Jack make up to the giant’s castle, anyway? Was it just the one, or did he pilfer all the giant’s treasure over the course of a week? Was the giant a lone miser, or did he have a wife who helped Jack bedevil her cruel husband?

And is it really fair to root for Jack, stealing the giant’s gold and ensuring his grisly end? Some adaptations, including a 1952 Abbott & Costello comedy, include some rather important details about Jack and his community’s poverty, blaming the giant for stealing all the area’s gold. On the other end of the spectrum, a 2001 TV miniseries directed by Brian Henson, shown in America on CBS, painted Jack as the villain of the piece, and sent his descendant back to the kingdom of the giants to return the stolen property and atone for the crime.

How will your child interpret the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk”? How will you retell it to him or her at bedtime? We’re sure you will add a detail or two, and your child will tell a slightly different version to his or her own kids down the line as the stories continue to evolve with each new generation.

Once Upon a Time… Exploring the World of Fairy Tales opens this Saturday, May 16, and runs through July 26. We hope that you’ll come and play with us!

For more information about Jack and the Beanstalk and its cultural origins, see:
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/jackbeanstalk/history.html
https://suite.io/john-k-davis/1wj72tj
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_and_the_Beanstalk

Staff Picks: More Children’s Books

Last month, we asked our staff to share some favorite children’s books, and the resulting chapter, which you can go check out if you haven’t, was really popular! Reading with your kids is a great way to inspire them to read on their own, and to keep them engaged and interested in reading. So, with an eye toward curling up under a blanket this evening and having some quality reading time, why not stop by your library or a great bookstore like Little Shop of Stories in Decatur and pick one of these favorites?

Pam Duncan, manager of public programming, recommends:
My favorite book as a youngster was Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary. It was my first chapter book and I loved it because I could identify so well with the heroine, Ramona. As the youngest of five children and ten cousins I was ALWAYs striving to be a big kid. (I still am.) I wanted so badly to grow up but was accused of being a nuisance and a pest. As Ramona bemoans, “How can I stop being a pest if I never was trying to be one in the first place?” I was always getting into trouble and can relate to Ramona wanting to touch the beautiful boingy curls of a classmate during kindergarten recess only to get into trouble for pulling her hair. (I’m blessed that the women I now work with let me touch their beautiful boingy curls). I always meant well but kept messing up.

Karen Kelly, director of exhibits & education, recommends:
My children loved Goodnight Gorilla by James Mayhew, because it had words, but also room to talk about what was happening on each page, as the Gorilla let all the animals out so they could sleep with the zookeeper. We had lots of fun inventing our own description of the story and thinking about the sounds each animal would make if it snored! As a life-long museum person, I also loved Mayhew’s Katie and the Mona Lisa. The idea of climbing in and out of paintings, meeting Mona Lisa and St. George and the dragon, and dancing with nymphs was fun for me and my children. It made art come to life in a way they related to easily.

Christy Costello, director of finance and HR, recommends:
A book I’m sure my parents tired of is The Monster at the End of this Book by John Stone and Mike Smolin. But I loved the illustrations (they are ’70s fabulous) and the interactivity of this book. Our Narrator, lovable furry Grover from Sesame Street, is afraid of the future (the end of the book) and he does everything he can think of to keep you the reader from turning pages to get there. Which made for some super fun reading – pretending to have to break through ropes and brick walls etc. When the end comes we find it is not at all scary. A good reminder that the unknown is not necessarily bad, its just unknown.

Grant Goggans (that’s me!!), marketing assistant, recommends:
I don’t remember reading Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile by Bernard Weber as a child myself, but I have read this book more times in the last twelve months than anything else. It’s the second in the series of Lyle books, and my three year-old is completely taken by the plot, which I feared, wrongly, might have been too complicated for him. Lyle is a performing crocodile who lives with the Primm family and can’t help but aggravate their grouchy neighbor, Mr. Grumps. Apart from the fun artwork, which often sweeps across double-page spreads and gives you and your young reader the chance to ask questions and look for details, parents will get the opportunity to use different voices for different characters. Only try not to create too gravelly a voice for Mr. Grumps, because if your children like this half as much as mine does, you’ll be growling his lines a lot, and it’ll take quite a toll on your throat!

We would love to hear from you! What children’s books are your family’s favorites?

For more info on our literacy outreach program, Connected Learning, Connected Communities, click here.

Staff Picks: Children’s Books

The cold weather is coming! Actually, this being Georgia, the cold weather already came, went away for a bit, rained some, got hot, got cold, and warmed up, but we’re pretty sure that it’s back. Anyway, we were looking ahead to some chilly evenings curled up on the couch under a big comfy blanket reading to our little ones, which is always incredibly fun, and wondered what great books our Museum staff would suggest for occasions like this. So we put out the call and got some terrific recommendations back. Why not visit your local library or bookstore – we adore Little Shop of Stories in Decatur – and check out some of these great books?

Where The Wild Things Are

Phantom Tollbooth

James and the Giant Peach

Corduroy

Alexandra Cleveland, our Party Lead, recommends:
My favorite children’s book is Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Not only are the illustrations beautiful and iconic, but it also has a great underlying message. On the surface, the book is a great adventure of an wild boy trying to escape for his frustrations with his mother. When looked into further, the book is actually a great message to children about recognizing and dealing with emotions. As the trees and the forest begin to grow in Max’s room, it shows his growing anger of being sent to his room without dinner. The “Wild Things” and their “gnashing” display his fury that reaches a peak when he is crowned King of the “Wild Things.” At this point, Max realizes that he needs to return to home, suggesting that his anger has separated him from the one who loves him best: his mother. Whether you are good or bad, your parents will love you regardless. Max realizes this when he returns to a surprise bowl of hot soup, knowing his mother wouldn’t let him go to sleep without dinner. She still loves him no matter what.

Monica Dorsey, our Outreach Communication Coordinator, recommends:
I loved Corduroy by Don Freeman because as a young black girl, it was the first book that I read where I could see myself. I also connected with the main character, Lisa, because I loved teddy bears big and little. The book was told from the point of view of the teddy bear, which was different. The story touched my heart because he was neglected and “broken,” but she still found the beauty in him, repaired him and kept him for her own.

Jane Turner, our Executive Director, recommends:
I actually did not read James and the Giant Peach, written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake, until I had children of my own. It was the first of all of the books by Roald Dahl that I read and we all (my children and me) loved the story. I loved that James was the lovable underdog who managed to escape the clutches of two nasty, self-centered aunts and in doing so encountered a fantastic and magical world within a giant peach and with giant insect characters as friends. I loved that he prevailed through impossible (but somehow believable) challenges. I think that this book should be on every child’s bookshelf because Roald Dahl makes the unbelievable believable and in his story the young and helpless child ends up finding his strength and prevailing. It is a modern version of an old-fashioned fairy tale!

Gregg Van Laningham, Professor Labcoat, recommends:
The book I chose, The Phantom Tollbooth, written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer, is a chapter book for older kids (the suggested age range is 8-12), but I read it when I was 7-almost-8. I firmly believe it should be on every child’s bookshelf, patiently waiting for the day they decide to pick it up. The book is about the journey of a young boy, Milo, through a magical, allegorical land of wordplay, mathematics, and philosophy. It is Oh, The Places You’ll Go! on steroids. Milo’s adventures begin unexpectedly, and he often finds himself confused by what he encounters, but he perseveres and is rewarded for doing so. My experience as a 7-year-old reader closely mirrored his in these respects. There are not many books that I like to re-read, but I find myself revisiting this one every few years. I get a chance to see the world that I built in my mind over two decades ago, I understand the jokes that I missed the first few times through, and I feel closer to my third grade self. I realize now that, as a child, I unwittingly learned valuable lessons about myself, other people, and the world at large from this book. It’s a good read for anybody, and perfect for precocious kids who claim that they’re bored all the time.

We’ll see if we can’t get some more great book ideas from our staff to share with you again in a follow-up post soon. In the meantime, we would love to hear from you! What children’s books are your family’s favorites?

For more info on our literacy outreach program, Connected Learning, Connected Communities, click here.

Hey Atlantans! Let’s Read, Let’s Move!

While many Americans, especially kids, are happy to see the end of the school year, we want to watch out for the big case of summertime blahs that can infect children. Studies have consistently shown that three things have been happening to children over the last few decades: obesity is up and literacy is down, and things get worse over the summer.

United We Serve: Let’s Read. Let’s Move is a national initiative that calls on all Americans to participate in combating summer reading loss and childhood obesity through volunteering and community service during the summer months. From the organization’s web site, “Working together, Americans can foster a generation that is less prone to disease, has higher academic achievers, and is more educated about food and its effects on health. These factors can have lasting effects on a child’s overall development and future.”

There have always been summer reading lists compiled by regional libraries, but with this initiative, which started in 2012, there’s a larger umbrella to unify the various state and city agencies that have been working to keep kids active. In Atlanta, the initiative has set the groundwork for Mayor’s Summer Reading Club as well as GEEARS – the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, both of which work to get kids excited about reading and exercise.

For the third year, the Museum is proud to be partnering with these agencies and presenting a Let’s Read Let’s Move day this coming Saturday, June 7th. We have a full day of events planned, which you can read about at our website. These include a lantern-making craft, a scavenger hunt, a cooking demo, a bicycle helmet safety demo, and story time with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

Saturday’s festivities mark the kickoff for two months of events around Atlanta celebrating reading, wrapping up with “A Summer of New Adventures” at the Woodruff Arts Center on August 2. You can find more events by visiting the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club’s events calendar.

On Saturday, all of the children who attend will leave with a free book. The books that are being read and given away are Stripes of All Types by Susan Stockdale, Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street by Roni Schotter, and Amari’s Bike Adventure, by the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy at the Atlanta Speech School. All the books are wonderful, but we are especially taken with what the Atlanta Speech School has produced. This is the second book starring Amari, and we love having a young heroine learning about life in our city. In this book. she works hard to learn how to master a bicycle so that she can ride with her family in the Atlanta Beltline’s Lantern Parade.

According to Karen Kelly, Director of Exhibits and Education, “We have seen the research that shows that active kids do better in school, and we want to always encourage that as well as encourage literacy. We’d like to engage parents in their children’s learning, and a great, simple way to do that is to work on making reading itself a more cooperative and exciting time. We’ve learned that pausing throughout the stories that you read with your children to ask questions and wonder aloud what might happen next really does enhance learning, and keeps children motivated and excited by the stories that they’re reading.”

We’re thrilled to be working with the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club! We hope that you’ll join us for this kickoff event, because we have so much planned and so many neat activities going on throughout the day, and all of it will be so exciting. Karen said it best when she told us, “This is fun, y’all!”

SOURCES:
United We Serve
Let’s Move, Active Schools