Reading Diary A: Native American Hero Tales

I am reading Native American Hero Tales this week! Wow, they are so awesome. I really love the Native American stories because they are always so detailed and clever. I love how many of the stories connect back to nature and the earth around us. It is such a reflection of the respect that the Native people felt for the earth and the living things on it.

Hupa woman and child. Photograph taken by
Edward Curtis

I really liked the story Bluejay and His Companions. It had so much action! I typically find that Native American stories are really focused on the detail and the beautiful imagery inside of the story, and less focused on this action, but this story was not like that! Bluejay and his companions really did go on an adventure of sorts (not of their own volition of course). I loved that the story was predictable in the way that each after each escape I knew they would come across a new village with a new challenge to find their way out of, but had no idea what that challenge would be. It made the story so easy to follow because their was that sense of repetitiveness in the plot. However it was still so interesting because the challenges were new and exciting each time!

I also really liked the story about Dug-From-Ground. This was another story that focused a lot on action and less on the descriptive imagery. It was still very full of detail and I was able to make a clear picture in my head of the story as it happened, however the action was awesome and so interesting! I felt so engaged. I think that sometimes stories that lack any sort of action can be boring and hard to read, so I loved that these stories really brought a lot of action into them.