The first story I read was “King of the forest” which was a Chinese Story. It was about making others believe you are better than everyone else. I thought this wasn’t a good story. It didn’t have an overall message to learn from. The story was saying that it’s okay to believe you’re better than your peers when in fact you should never think like that. Although there are definitely instances in my life where I believed I was better those around me. For example, when I was younger, I believed that I was better than my teammates at soccer, and they should be afraid of me. This wasn’t the best way to look at myself because it made those around me not like me, like the animals the fox scared in the story. The language they used was the same as ours, so the story was easy to follow along.
The next story I read was “The Blue Coat” which was a Jewish story. The story was about a grandfather making many different items for his grandson out of a single piece of cloth. This story was relatable, they used names and items that I was familiar with. Their culture seemed very similar to mine. The young boy David called the other character in the story “granddad” and we use that term as well. They also did things like fishing and playing at the park, which I have done as well. I really enjoyed this short story and felt as though it was an English story.
The story I choose to recast is “Tiddalik, The Thirsty frog” The story was an Australian story. In the story, a frog living in swamps drinks all the water leaving none for the other animals. At the end of the story Tiddalik, the frog spits the water out for the other animals. In order to change the culture of this story to American, I would first change the setting of the story. Instead of story taking place in lagoons and swaps, I would have it take place in America in the home of a human. The next thing I would change would be the characters in the story along with their names. Instead of Australian animals like a kangaroo and platypus, I would make the little boys and girls with American names like Olivia. The last part of the story I would change would be what the main characters is taking away from all the other kids. Instead of a frog drinking all the water, so nobody else could have any, I would have a young boy eat all the birthday cake at a party so none of his friends could enjoy any. That way the message is still the same, but it would be easier for Americans to relate personally.
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