Essay Week 11: First Memories of Reading

My first memories of reading definitely including the two series’ called Junie B. Jones and the Magic Tree House. I still have the opening line to Junie B. Jones memorized. I have a good friend who has a daughter the age of 6 and all I want to do is buy her those books so she can enjoy the same ones that I used to. Another book that I very vividly remember reading is one called How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found. Every time I go to bookstores, I always go to the children’s section looking for this one. I remember it being one of the best book I had ever read but cannot for the life of me remember what it is about. I used to do this program at school where we could read certain books and then take quizzes over them and get points. I remember doing as many as I could because I genuinely loved reading so much! Something I am so excited for after I graduate is being able to read so many more books because of all the time I will have. Another one that is at the front of my reading memory is the book Holes. Gosh, that was my number one favorite book! The fact that Louis Sachar was able to come up with that book amazes me because it is so creative and detailed! A big similarity that I have with my first experiences with reading is that i love to read similar books or series of books. I know it’s super cliche but I really love reading Nicholas Sparks books nowadays. I saw him speak at a convention one time which really made me admire his writing. I also really enjoy inspirational Christian books. My favorite Christian authors are Tim Keller and Beth Moore. After writing this essay, it really makes me want to go and buy a bunch of my favorite books from when I was little to just go back over and read.

Image Information: This was one of my favorite books growing up taken from Amazon

Storytelling Week 11: Wanting to Be Famous

There once was a red-headed boy named Willard who loved to write music. He was very passionate about his lyrics and felt it was the perfect way to express himself. He was slowly becoming famous for his lyrics and passion for singing. He had been trying for very many years and it was finally paying off. Big artists were coming to him for his incredible songwriting ability.His first album was going to include a song called Cardboard House, which was a terribly complex song about his life before becoming famous. 
Before he brought this song to his producers, he ran into a man named Deacon at a park. When they ran into each other, he dropped all his things, including a paper with the lyrics of Cardboard House. He was in a hurry, so he managed to get all his things and go to the meeting. When he got there he realized that he had dropped the lyrics and they were probably still back at the park. What he didn't realize was that Deacon was a loyal fan of his. Maybe more than a fan, he was obsessed with him. See, Deacon looked just like him and always wished that he could just BE him. They could have been long lost twins due to the strong resemblance.  Now that he had a copy of Willard’s lyrics in his hands he was going to try to be him like he had always planned.

Willard left the studio, desperately trying to find these amazing lyrics that would make his album number one. Deacon left a note for him at the park because he figured Willard would soon be back to find his lyrics. The note read, "If you ever want your lyrics back, you can find them at the old soda warehouse twenty minutes north of town." He led him to this warehouse to distract him for a long period of time. Deacon went to the studio and was shocked to find that the producers did not even think twice about whether or not he was Willard. The producers sat with him and collaborated on how to make the song better. They decided that they would release this song as a single by making a music video out of it. They were very impressed in the newfound passion that “Willard” had.

As they began talking about the ideas, a man named Brandon on the team began noticing weird mannerisms that Willard now had. He decided he would test him by texting him an inside joke and seeing whether or not he read it and laughed. After twenty minutes had gone by and "Willard” did not check his phone, he knew this guy was a phony. He called him out and Deacon immediately broke down, saying all he ever wanted was to be Willard. They had him taken away by security and called the real Willard and went forward with their normal business. Cardboard House ended up being the most sold song on iTunes, no thanks to the acts of Deacon.  

Image Information: Picture of Ed Sheeran and Rupert Grint which are the two that inspired my story taken from The Daily Telegraph 

Video Information: Here is the video that I got the idea for the story from.
Author's Note: I made this story based roughly on the story of A Ghostly Wife. In the original story, there is a husband and wife. What happens is that the wife goes off into the forest and makes a ghost angry. The ghost beats her and leaves her for dead and goes back and impersonates her to the husband. She is very believable for a while until the husband's mother realizes that she is not the wife. I've been watching Ed Sheeran videos like crazy this past week so I made it based on his video for Lego House where Rupert Grint pretends to be Ed Sheeran throughout the course of the video. I think this made it pretty funny and works well in comparison to the Ghostly Wife. It is very unrealistic because I'm sure Willard would soon come back to the production studio but I wanted to make it a lot like the story so had him get lost. Instead of using a wife and a husband, I used a famous boy named Willard and his producer. Instead of using a ghost, I used a crazy obsessed fan of Willard named Deacon. Willard walks towards the production studio after writing a new song when Deacon swapped spots with him, which is supposed to represent the wife from the story getting beat up by the ghost. In the story the ghost leaves her for almost dead but I did not want to go that far so I just had Deacon distract him. In the original story the mother-in-law figures out that the ghostly wife is an imposter and in this story I had the producer realize the same by sending a text that he would normally send to Willard. In the original story, when the husband and wife are reunited, they have lots of babies and a great marriage. To parallel this, I had Willard get a number one hit when he was back to the studio.

Bibliography
Folk-Tales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day (1912)

Reading Diary Week 11 Part B

Ghostly Wife: This story was about a woman who was nearly beaten to death and then a ghost goes home in her in her place. The husband and mother in law don't realize for a while. When they finally realize, they set a trap and then find out she is fake. They go and rescue his real wife.

The Story of the Brahmadaitya: In this story a poor Brahman goes into the forest and comes across some memorable characters. He eventually gets supplied with all the things he needs and is overjoyed with his wife.

Part B

Storytelling Week 10: The Blob Raid

On the beaches of Oregon is a camp called Camp Purple Field. This is a wonderful summer camp that is constantly being used for its adventures and activities. It is for people of all ages, surprisingly, which is very uncommon for summer camps. They have groups ranging from 5-55. There are three people who were in charge of running it named Donny Travis, Asher Donald, and Jaiden Bartlet. They are all from extremely different backgrounds. Donny Travis comes from Texas and knows a lot about summer camps because there is usually one in each town in Texas. Asher came from Maine, the complete opposite side of the USA than Oregon. He knew a lot about beach activities but not so much about camps. Jaiden is from England where there were not very many overnight summer camps to be found in her area. She had taken this job as a way to remain in the USA and fell completely in love with camping. They are all extremely passionate about this job and will let nothing come in the way of providing people with an excellent camping experience. This was a highly successful because of an asset they possessed for almost 20 years. It was the biggest blob in the continental United States. People traveled from all over the country to come jump on this blob. Donny, Asher, and Jaiden were insanely protective over their blob. There is a neighboring camp that was mediocre in comparison to Camp Purple Field. This camp is called Camp Housecake. There is only one man in charge of this camp and his name is Trevor Lovefield. All he ever wanted in life was the steal the blob from Camp Purple Field.

A couple months ago, Trevor had enough of them stealing all of the camping grounds he set out a scheme to steal the blob. He decided he would have his kitchen staff go over to their camp pretending to need to borrow some supplies. After this he would go steal the key that was kept in a not so secret box in their office. There was a girl who worked in their office who had a small crush on him. He would use this to his advantage by distracting her. After he retrieved the key he would take his staff late at night and unlock the blob and float it away from the camp to his camp. He would next deflate the blob, give it a new paint job and say it was a gift to him and it had nothing to do with Camp Purple Field.

The plan is successful for the most part. One of the kitchen ladies was very scared and took a lot of convincing to go distract Donny, Jaiden, and Asher. He managed to bring the blob to his camp, only to not know how to take care of a blob this size. He ended up popping the blob and being left wasting time and not having the blob. Luckily for the staff at Camp Purple Lake, their anonymous blob maker was in the process of making a new one. Even though they had theirs stolen, they were able to get a new and improved one. A month after this happened Trevor’s camp went out of business.

Image Information: A picture of a blob which is what they fight over in my story taken from Snyder's Alaska Blog

Author's Note: I got the idea for this retelling from the cattle raid. It is based very loosely off of that story. Instead of stealing cattle, they are obviously trying to steal a blob from a neighboring camp. When I was brainstorming story ideas, I thought of the book Holes which is why I chose to do a camp setting. 

Bibliography: 

• Narayan, R. K. (1978). The Mahabharata.

Reading Diary A Week 10

I have definitely enjoyed reading this book a lot because of the differences yet similarities to the last two. I have, however, struggled a little bit with all of the difficult names. My favorite part of this section of the reading this week was the cattle raid. I think my favorite part of Indian Epics has been reading of animals and their perceptions of those animals. Susharman is happy about the death of Kichaka but is quickly captured by Bhima. I just thought it was funny to read about the way of getting even or revenge was by stealing cattle. I also enjoyed reading about everyone disguising themselves.

Storytelling Week 2: Mel's Story

"Have you ever heard the story about the secluded whale of the Pacific Ocean?" Avril the sea tortoise asked her friend.

"No, I don't think I recall that story," her friend Livvy the seahorse responded.

"Well, we have a bit of time before our next expedition so let me enlighten you. There once was a beautiful blue whale named Mel. Even though blue whales normally live to be 40 years old she was well beyond 70 and still looked as if she was 20. She had scales unlike any other creature in the sea. When she would swim, they would radiate all of the colors in the rainbow. She had a wildly stunning mate named Norris. He was the leader of the clan of creatures in the Pacific Ocean, the biggest army of fish anyone has ever seen. He was unlike any other blue whale because he had black stripes on him, which helped him to demand authority in the water. They were the most beloved mates in the ocean. They had two babies who Mel loved with all of her heart, Arie and Simon. Norris loved these males because he was able to act himself around them and not be trying to impress them like he had to do with Mel. They often would leave their home and explore the huge ocean, usually getting into lots of trouble. Since Norris was the most feared creature in that ocean, they acted very carefree about their actions. Without Mel knowing, they began tearing up reefs because they enjoyed all the colors that would show when the whales destroyed the reefs. One day they made the worst mistake of all. They tore up the Great Barrier Reef which was home to a great seahorse goddess named Kinley. Even though she was very tiny, especially compared to the whales, she still contained much more power than they. When she saw these careless whales ruining her home, she knew she had to let them know of the wrong they were doing to her home. How in the world could they tear up the place where she and so many of her friends has resided for so long? With a flick of her tail she killed the great Norris because of his severely reckless actions. It was a harsh punishment but she knew that it had to be done. Arie and Simon hurried home to tell their mother of the tragedy that occured. Mel was so upset with her babies. How could they continue on acting like this? How could they let her soulmate die? Something had to be done about this. They yelled and roared their great roars but Kinley responded to their screams with a curse. She had no time for their complaints when she was busy recovering her home from all of the mess that they had caused. They were transformed from blue whales to deep sea viper fish, which are the ugliest fish in all of the ocean. They now resided at the deepest depths of the ocean, trying to kill any creatures that were dumb enough to swim into the Challenger Deep where they now lived. The only food that they now ate were the fish that died and fell from the shallow water above.”

Image Information: photo of a blue whale like the characters in the story taken from Discovery Education 

Image Information: photo of a viper fish, which is what Kinley turned Mel, Arie, and Simon into taken from Fish Index 

Author Note: I decided to retell the story of Thataka that Viswamithra told to the boys.  I used whales as the main characters instead of demigods. I think that these worked because they are also feared creatures of the sea just like the demigods in the story. I kept the story pretty much the same except changing destruction of forests to destruction of reefs. It seemed to be the most appropriate way to transfer the same idea into a story of them under the sea. Just the way the dad and boys in the story would do things that the mother did not approve of, that's what the whales would do here. Instead of Agasthya, I used Kinley the seahorse goddess, my favorite part. I really liked that she was a small creature who could still do so much damage to such large ones. I think that it definitely showed how powerful she was just like Agasthya from the story. I made them shape-shift into the ugliest fish in the sea which seemed appropriate because it made them look terrible compared to the beautiful whales that they once were. I also added isolation to them because they now had to live at the bottom of the sea away from any other fish that they could associate with. 

Bibliography: 

• Narayan, R. K. (1972) The Ramayana.

Reading Diary Assessment

When I was going back over the instructions for the reading diaries I really I like when it said that they are more for our benefit than for an actual assignment if that makes sense. When I went back and read stuff I could easily recall other facts that I had not included merely because I had written down the facts that I felt were the most important. It's completely true that our schedules get so busy so this is a perfect assignment. I actually feel like I need to go and making reading diaries for other books I read because often times I will be reading a book and then not be able to pick it up for a couple weeks which causes me to forget a lot of the information I was reading. I think I did a pretty good job on my assignments because they definitely serve their purpose of allowing me to remember what I read. I actually never included any images in my diary posts but I guess that idea never really crossed my mind. I definitely think that's something that will help me remember the stories more in the future. As I'm reading my posts I can definitely tell what a hopeless romantic I am because more of the things that I find the most memorable are things about the love story that went on in the books. As far as advice for other students goes I would say to definitely focus on the fact that this assignment is for us and our benefit. It should compliment our learning styles. It's hard to compare other peoples reading diaries because things that are important to one person might not be important to another and/or the learning styles between people may be completely different.