UnTextbook Week 1

For my first reading choice I chose the Alice in Wonderland UnTextbook because this was one of the Disney fairy tales I remember watching as a child. I didn't know as much about it as I  do now because Disney always makes the stories child friendly, so when I became a teenagers I remember discovering the other versions of the story. I was excited when Tim Burton made a movie and when I watched it I thought it was a great attempt at recreating the original story. One of the things that has always interested me about all the adaptations was the crazy visuals of the story so I really was interested in seeing the original version to see what inspired all the adaptations.

My next reading choice was the Aesop Fables because as a child I was read the stories and fables as a kid. I have read the Aesop Fables a number of times and the reason they still interest me is because as a child the stories my parents would read me always had a happy ending. In fact as an adult I know now that most of the fairy tales I was read had extremely violent story lines and endings. This is why I love the Aesop Fables because they teach the same lessons I was taught as a kid without the Rosy glasses. So though I have read them a number of time I continue to read them and would read them again and again. So Interesting.

The next group of stories that interest me is the Adam and Eve section of the UnTexbook. I love the Paradise lost and other adaptations of the story of Adam and Eve. I like how people take a very short story and expand on it. I  am interested in how other author's change details about story to fit their point of view. I took a class on Indian Epics last semester and one of the things that I loved about it was how the Ramayana left a ton to the imagination, and I think the Bible does the same thing, which allows author's to retell the stories in their own words while remaining true to the original facts of the story.

As I already said earlier in this post one of things I love is comparing the stories I was told as a child to the original stories. The Brothers Grimm fairy tales are the stories I think most children are familiar with because all the fairy tales I do know from my childhood were some adaptation of their original story or another. One of the things I like about these stories is how much they have been diluted down through time to fit the current beliefs of people. By today's standards these are violent stories and over the course the details may have changed, but the themes of the stories have remained the same.



Alice from Alice in Wonderland

I found this picture from the pintrest boards. I chose it because I think it really goes along with the idea that the stories we are told as children rarely reflect the actual nature of the stories. These images play and important part in our formations of the characters in the story and though this may not be a completely inaccurate depiction of Alice, it does give a false happiness to the original story. This simple image works to promote the Disney version of the story, instead of promoting the original story.

Picture attributes...It was pinned on pintrest but I was unable to find complete user rights so all I am able to do is give the link to the page.   http://lipmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Aice-In-Wonderland-alice-in-wonderland-6928094-1000-766.jpg