Secret Ways : Character Building

Anthologies (3) Primary, Elementary

This is the last in a series of three posts in the anthology category of literature that builds character. I will return to this category in the future since there are so many good anthologies. I invite your comments and suggestions for those future reviews in this blog. In the next month I will review anthologies for the upper grade levels.

Ordinary Splendors: Tales of Virtue and Wisdom. Toni Knapp.
Animals from 15 legends and folktales around the world display characteristics of courage, responsibility, honor, and love.

Oxford Book of Children's Stories, The. Jan Mark.
An historical anthology of many of the best children's short stories from the past 250 years, this book offers an array of suitable character building choices.

People Could Fly, The. Virginia Hamilton.
The awards and reviews as presented by the Scholastic website.
Tomie de Paola's Favorite Nursery Tales. Aesop, retold by Tomie de Paola.
This book includes fables such as "The Tortoise and the Hare," a story in which the reader learns that "slow and steady wins the race."

True Valor. Mildred. A. Martin.
Ordinary people perform extraordinary feats of courage during wartime. This book has nine such stories.

Witch of Fourth Street and Other Stories, The. Myron Levoy.
This book contains eight touching stories about various immigrant groups that live on New York's Lower East Side in the 1920's.

Refer back to blog posts for October 4 and October 23 for longer descriptions of two wonderful anthologies not listed in the three "series" posts. The Book of Home and Family and The Book of Virtue.

This post continues a listing of anthologies. You may or may not find all of these titles in your library, but the selections here illustrate the fact that you may have find books on your own shelves or that of your parents and grandparents. Become a browser of shelves! You may find good old collections, folk tales representative of your family background, or a favorite from your own childhood. Don't forget to ask living relatives for the tales that were read or told to them - this is a rich source!

Fairy Tale Treasury, The. Collected by Virginia Haviland.
Folk and fairy tales in this treasury are stories from the oral tradition told by people of many cultures to pass on their values, fears, hopes, and dreams. With this understanding, tales can be selected and read for the ideals that are transferred through the story. In this way, many other readily available anthologies and picture books become useful as literature to build character. The collector, Virginia Haviland, was a respected authority on children's literature, chairing the Children's Literature Services Division of the American Library Association and numerous awards committees e.g. Newbery-Caldecott, National Book Award, Hans Christian Anderson. She founded the Center for Children's Literature at the Library of Congress. She was particularly noted for her knowledge of folklore so we would all do well to check out her Favorite Fairy Tale series - tales collected from sixteen different countries.

In Grandma's Attic. Arleta Richardson.
This is a classic series of books that has gone through several reprints due to clear character messages conveyed humorously through anecdotes from Grandma's childhood. Parents and teachers should note that there is Christian messaging in some of the stories and gauge whether this fits your audience. It is more moral in tone than religious.

Kids Random Acts of Kindness. Conari Press, Ed.
Children from around the world tell how good it feels to do something kind for someone else.

Little People Who Became Great. Laura Anoinette Lurge.
Printed in 1935, these stories were written at that time as "Stories of the Lives of those Whom Every Child Should Know."

Manners. Aliki.
The author employs a humorous style to teach good manners.

Our summer vacation is quickly becoming a shimmering memory as we find ourselves already in the fourth week of school. I am still in the trenches as a teacher, my first professional love, but am also spending much of my time consolidating the sources found during the past 30 years at Birchwood School on this topic of literature that builds character. So the blog begins anew with fresh purpose: as a legacy for our alumni, their children, and friends. Sharing stories here is in the spirit of the literary heritage of tales passed down from generation to generation for the instruction of children.

I began this year with my eighth graders telling them the story of The Three Little Pigs. That's right, they are not too old for this nursery tale! They followed me with bemused looks as I told the tale using all the appropriate voices. "Little pig, little pig, let me come in."
"Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin."
"Then I'll huff! whooooooooooo! and I'll puff! whooooooooooooooo! and I'll blowwwww your house in!" And down fall in succession the houses of the first two little pigs who had built their houses of straw (first piggy) and sticks (second little piggy). But when the wolf does the same routine with the third little piggy, he fails. Why? Because he built his house out of bricks. It took longer. It was harder work. But he used the right materials and his house stayed put.

The lesson in this fable was easy for these students to see. I was talking about starting the year with the right materials and the right mind set. A second application was that of the carpenter: Imagine him showing up to work without a hammer? without nails? He'd tell his customer,  "Sorry, Ma'am, I hope to put your cabinet together today. Shucks, I just forgot my hammer, but I'll see what I can do." What a joke. Eighth graders can see right away the need for sharpened pencils, paper on hand etc. But it requires repeated talks shared by many of us through varieties of stories, biographies, and personal or family anecdotes to infuse children when it comes to having the right motivations and attitudes.

One can't help but wonder how much was behind the original telling of the traditional tales. The origins of these tales are hard to trace, but how they have endured is easier to see. The message is universal, as in the case of this tale about the three pigs:  Build your life with solid materials! It may take longer to make, find, and build with bricks but if you take the shortcut and build quickly with straw or sticks your foundation cannot hold you through all manner of wolves and storms that come your way. (Parents and teachers have their own embellishments. The "straw" can be the ideas in your head of what you think you can do without much work. The "sticks" are the ways we do things half-way. etc.) No doubt this tale reflects the instruction and hopes that every parent or teacher has for their child. It also calls to mind the parable of the man who built his house upon the sand or the sower who did not sow upon good soil. Thus, the wisdom of the ages is in the simplest of tales.

When folklorist Joseph Jacobs collected the English tales (as Perrault had done for the French and the Grimm brothers for the German) he had this to say, "This book," he wrote of English Fairy Tales, "is meant to be read aloud, and not merely taken in by the eye." (ed. Maria Tatar. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales.) Make the drama come alive! (And, with young children there is no need to tack on a lesson. Just tell the tale; lessons seep in over time all on their own.) The origins are hard to trace and the tale spans cultures. An interesting history is assembled in the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Little_Pigs

I grew up on the Disney version and the lessons play back as a movie in my mind to this day. But it is my mother's voice that I hear and strive to copy when I squeak to my eighth graders: "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

Oh dear, it looks like I took the entire summer off and then some! Literature for building character has been a career-long goal and a life-long experience (begun at birth), so this blog is destined to continue on for the rest of my life - despite any lapses.

I am picking it up on the occasion of my youngest daughter's 30th birthday with the fairy tale about the ugly duckling. In this tale by Hans Christian Anderson, the big egg in mother duck's nest produces a large gray baby duck that does not look like the others. As a result this "duckling" spends the first part of life suffering from taunts and isolation. However, there comes the day when the true swan nature becomes manifest, first to the swan and then to everyone else.

When she was a little girl, my daughter thought of herself in this way. She would notice things about herself such as that she learned to tell time a little later than others (so what! but to her it was a difference...), she loved to write late at night rather than to read like her older sister, and she had the usual ups and downs with friends that all children pass through. While we understood and recognized the beauty of her unique virtues, she had to grow into this realization herself. One evening at the dinner table we were talking about how each child had a metaphor to symbolize their unique process of growth. Beginning with the oldest we settled upon a pearl, an oak, and a lion cub. When we came to the youngest she herself blurted out: "and I am the swan!" We were amazed at the self-awareness. We had known about her struggles to accept herself and we could not believe the wisdom that came flowing forth in her exclamation. She was not even totally aware of how insightful she was being. But it was true - in other areas of her life we could see that she was becoming happy in her own skin. Self worth came not from comparisons but by contentment.

And herein is the lesson from The Ugly Duckling: with patience, ones true nature WILL come out. Like the swan, each child can eventually spread their wings and join their majestic kin who float along the waters, serving as a source of delight for others. Versions of this story abound in anthologies, picture books, and - in those treasures of treasures - classic fairy tale collections. To illustrate the beauty of well-written fairy tales, here are some translated excerpts from Andersen's Danish version in his story published in 1844.

"...The duckling had never seen such beautiful birds, dazzlingly white with long, graceful necks...As the ugly little duckling watched them mount higher and higher up in the air, he felt a strange sensation...When they were out of sight, he dived down to the bottom of the waters, and when he surfaced, he was almost beside himself with excitement. He had no idea who these birds were, nor did he know anything about their destination. Yet they were more precious to him than any birds he had ever known...

...One day, the sun began to shine again, and the larks began to sing. Spring had arrived in all its beauty...Then all at once he decided to try his wings. They whirred much louder then before, and they carried him away swiftly. Almost before he knew it, he found himself in a large garden. The apple trees were in full blossom, and the fragrant lilacs bent their long green branches down on a stream that wound its way across a smooth lawn. It was so lovely here in all the freshness of early spring! From a nearby thicket, three beautiful white swans emerged, ruffling their feathers and floating lightly over the still waters. The duckling recognized the splendid creatures...

...What did he discover in the clear surface beneath him? He saw his own image, and he was no longer a clumsy, gray bird, ugly and unpleasant to look at - no, he was himself a swan!...

...He now felt positively glad to have endured so much hardship and adversity. It helped him appreciate all the happiness and beauty surrounding him...The three great swans swam around the newcomer and stroked his neck with their beaks...

...He felt quite humbled, and he tucked his head under his wing - he himself hardly knew why. He was so very happy, but not a bit proud, for a good heart is never proud."
From the book The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. Edited by Maria Tatar.

Happy 30th Birthday to my youngest daughter - a beautiful swan!