Hello Again!
Since we will be starting our lesson about multicultural fairy tales this week, I want us to all keep in mind the traditional fairy tales that we know and love.
The 1st story we're going read is Little Red Riding Hood. Read any classic version of Little Red Riding Hood that you have at home or from the library. As you read, use this sheet to keep track of the characters, the setting, and the events that go on in the tale.
Now, we're going to compare it to a multicultural version titled Petite Rouge-A Cajun Red Riding Hood. Here are 5 videos that the author Mike Artell posted of himself reading the book. Listen to them and pay attention to the characters, the settings, and the events that go on in his story.
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We will read it again in class, but think: what does his way of telling the story tell us about Cajun culture? Why do you think he wanted to write a Cajun version of Little Red Riding Hood? For our in-class comparison, please print this venn diagram for when we record things that are the same and things that are different about both stories. If you want, you can also post a response about your reactions to Petite Rouge too. Do you think this story is better than the classic one?
SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSE:
ReplyDeleteAfter listening the video clips of Mike Artell reading "Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood," I can kind of tell that Cajun culture is a combination of African, Southern, and French cultures. Mike Artell said in the 2nd video clip that "gumbo" is an African Bantu word that means okra; clearly, African culture made a big impact on the Cajun culture's food ways because people still eat gumbo today! Mike also says that Cajun culture exists in Louisiana, which is in the South; I think the state's place in the Southeastern region of the U.S. is why the Cajun dialect (Mike Artell's voice in the video) sounds kind of like how my grandmother talks (She is from the South). But the main thing that I thought was different about Mike's Cajun voice was how much French he used! In the first video, Mike says that's because Cajun people originally came from Canada and were really "Acadians" but people messed up the name, which is why we say "Cajuns." Anyway, in Canada, Acadia was a French colony, so everyone there spoke French. Louisiana also started out as a French colony, so that's also probably why Cajun culture uses a lot of French words. Mike even uses French words to name the characters--
"Petite Rouge" actually means "Little Red" in French! It's not sloppy, but the way Mike reads the story makes Cajun culture sound really relaxed and easygoing. Sometimes, he doesn't use the kind of grammar that we have to learn at school. Maybe that's because he thinks everyone reading the story knows what he means to say. All in all, I liked this version of Little Red Riding Hood and thought Mike's way of telling the story was funny and entertaining.