Brazil and South America
From Elsie Spicer Eells, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24714/24714-h/24714-h.htm (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24714/24714-h/24714-h.htm)
Audio (https://librivox.org/fairy-tales-from-brazil-by-elsie-spicer-eells/)
These stories:
“How Night Came”
“How Monkey Became a Trickster”
“Why Bananas Belong to the Monkey”
“How Black Became White”
“Why the Sea Moans
https://youtu.be/EYZsHf9geWA
Questions:
Elsie Spicer Eels is one of the earliest translators of children’s literature from Brazil into English. Her name is not in Wikipedia in English, but it is available only in the Portuguese Wiki. She was an American and a traveler but otherwise had no particular training to collect stories.
Where do you see her cultural biases?
What are her standards for picking stories for her volume?
The other Brazilian folktales come from a variety of online sources. where do you see:
The slave story influence, similar to Uncle Remus stories?
The African influences, similar to the picture books we’ve read?
The Grimm/Perrault influence, similar to the fairy tales in the beginning of the course?
The native stories, similar to the native American stories we read in the last lesson?
The Christian influences, similar to Bible stories?
Name the story and identify the influences.
What is Lobato trying to do with his folktales/literary fairy tales? What is he saying about Brazil and Brazilian childhood in his time?
In what ways do Lobato’s child characters Pedrinho, and Narizinho seem different from our expectations for a child character in other stories we’ve read?
Lobato wrote many adaptations of Jean de La Fontaine’s fables. “Burrice” seems to be adapted from La Fontaine’s “The Ass Laden with Sponges and the Ass Laden with Salt” . (II, 10) on this page:
The Lion and Gnat, the Ass laden with sponges, and the Ass laden with salt, the Lion and the Rat, the Dove and the Ant http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/twoliondove....
Compare the two stories and comment on Lobato’s editing choices. What changes did Lobato make? Why did he make them?
What do our textbook readers need to take away from this lesson about Brazil and South America?
Please remember what you’ve probably learned by now. No one story can represent a whole culture, but some stories are better than others.I have tried to find read-alouds with acceptable Spanish accents and presentations. As you may have figured out by now, it’s easy to make these read-alouds, and hard to make them great.Please list the cultural markers for each of these stories from Puerto Rico. At least three markers each.“The Song of El Coqui” by Nicholasa Mohrhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaEEmMiBp0Y“The Legend of the Golden Coqui” by Marjuan Canadyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erHfW1ik9XQ“ The Golden Flower, a Taino legend” by Nina Jaffehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg_9O3TeGhU“Juan Bobo Sends the Pig to Mass”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoZAeCmRhZk“Juan Bobo and the Cooking Pot”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z22N5zcdLN4