Extra Reading Diary: Tejas Legends

Wow I love the Tejas legends. They are so magical feeling. I also really love how filled with action many of them are. Sometimes I find that stories do not seem to have exciting actions and storylines, but many of these definitely do. They are so full of suspense, which I think is such an important thing to exist in a story. It keeps readers interested and wanting to finish the story. It also creates this sense of nervousness and excitement for what is going to happen next.

One of my favorite stories in this unit is When the Storm God Rides, I mean wow, what a story. It is, like so many Native American stories, centered around nature and animals, and very full of beautiful descriptions. However, it also has incredible suspense and action. I love that the story describes hurricanes and why they exist. The last hurricane that is described in the story is so full of excitement and danger. I was so enthralled while I was reading it.

Native American tapestry featuring moccasins

I also really enjoyed the story A Tribe that Left its Shoes. It was an origin story like so many Native American stories are and it was just such an interesting story. It described the origin of orchid flowers. Like the story When the Storm God Rides, this story also had quite a bit of excitement and suspense. A volcano erupted on the island where the Indians lived and they had to evacuate their homes. Many of them died. This part of the story was so action packed that it just made me want to keep reading. I was quite pleasantly surprised because I find that origin legends and myths are often not very action packed or suspenseful. The Tejas stories manage to teach as well as the be fun and exciting stories.

Creating suspense and excitement in stories is something that is really important to me in my writing, and I hope that I will be able to use what I read this week to help me write a better action filled story for my storybook story about Medea.

Reading Diary B: American Indian Fairy Tales

Wow I really love how descriptive the stories in this unit (American Indian Fairy Tales) are. There is so much detail in all of them, and I love all how so much of it is tied into nature. The people are described with similes comparing them to animals, or to landmarks. Its such an interesting way to utilize detail I think, and I love that it just really is reflective of Native American culture. In all of the detail there seems to be such a reverence for the natural world and its creatures.

I really loved this description of the daughters of the hunter from the story The Child of the Evening Star.

Their hair was dark and glossy as the wings of the blackbird, and when they walked or ran, it was with the grace and freedom of the deer in the forest.

The sentence is so elegant and I think that the description is really beautiful. I can picture the scenes in this story so well because of these descriptions. They also give the story kind of an ethereal feel, I think, which to me is really fitting in this particular story because the girl is protrayed as being so beautiful, so kind, and very wise. She chooses her husband based off of his heart and how beautiful he is inside, and not at all based on his outward appearance.

This story not only has beautiful language, but I really loved the youngest daughter. I love that this story is about looking past outward appearances and delving into the character beneath the face. It is always so important to remember that there is so much more, that is so much more important, beneath the skin, and I love that the youngest daughter in this story is the one who realizes that best.