How and where you read greatly influence your experience with the story you are reading. Sutter and I decided that it might be fun to read aloud to eachother from our Classic Fairy Tales book. We really got into the storytelling art and after reading "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" together we've decided to read to eachother at least one fairy tale a night. Isn't that how we hear most fairy tales when we are younger, aloud?The intro to "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" tells us that this story is a variant of "Beauty and the Beast" and "Cupid and Psyche", a story which appeared in the Golden Ass. We can find the the first story in our fairy tales book, however not the latter. When Sutter and were reading he couldn't remember the story of beautiful Psyche and Cupid. So here is a link to Cupid and Psyche for those who don't remember the story.
I found many different versions of East of the Sun and West of the Moon when I looked around online. One thing that struck me was the young woman rides the polar bear to his castle. In Phillip Pullman's book, Lyra makes friends with a polar bear, which they call armored bears because they wear armor of course. In any case Lyra ends up riding Iorek, the polar bear, at least two times in the Golden Compass. The image is even on the cover of some editions os The Golden Compass. But a young girl riding a polar bear is not a new image in terms of literature.
There are some more pictures in the book of fairy tales with a girl riding the polar bear, but here is a different one and I feel really bad for the bear:
1 comment:
Post a Comment