Angkat The Cambodian Cinderella

Angkat: The Cambodian Cinderellais the first Cinderella tale I have read with an evil father. In most Cinderella tales, the father is dead or neglectful of the child once married. However, this is the first time I have seen a tale where the father participates in harming the Cinderella character.

Angkat is the daughter of a fisherman and as with most Cinderella tales he marries a widow who has a daughter. His wife wants her daughter to be first daughter so she devises a fishing contest. Her daughter Kantok cheats and leaves Angkat in the traditional Cinderella servant role. When Angkat realized her stepsister had cheated and she would lose because her sister only left her one small fish, Angkat released the fish back into the pond. This act begins a relationship between girl and fish. She shares her rice ration with the fish each day. Unable to allow her stepsister even a small bit of enjoyment, Kantok decides to capture the fish. Angkat is devastated at the fate of her fish and the Spirit of Virtue appears before her to ask her about her troubles.

He tells her to place the fish bones under her sleeping mat and in the morning, a surprise will await her. She does as requested and finds golden slippers where the bones were in the morning. The girl follows the Sprits advice to leave one slipper under her mat and one by the open window. If you have read enough Cinderella tales, you can guess the fate of the shoe by the window. A bird takes the slipper to the Crown Prince who of course wants to marry the girl who owns it.

Angkat's stepmother provides the standard impossible task to prevent her from getting to try on the slipper. She scatters rice across the field telling the girl she can attend when every piece has been found. With assistance from the chickens, she is able to home, change, and pick up the other golden slipper.

Marriage was not the end Angkat's problems. In this version, even her father is filled with envy. He writes to her husband that he is gravely ill and must see his daughter. When she arrives home, they begin treating her like a servant, ordering her to cook soup for her father. As she is working, the three work together and kill her with the cauldron.

After her death, the story gets a little more confusing. The stepmother attempts to install Kantok in the palace. When the parents return home, they find banana plant growing where they killed their daughter. The father hacks down the plant carrying into the forest. There it grows into a bamboo forest. During a hunting trip, the Prince encounters the bamboo and feeling comfort from it has it cut down and brought back to the palace. Eventually sensing his wife's presence, he begs the Spirit of Virtue to return his wife to him. While not immediately clear, based on the fact the author states the Prince and Angkat are crowned King and Queen; one is led to believe his request is granted.

Terrible Tales

Terrible Tales: The Absolutely, Positively, 100 Percent TRUE Stories of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Those Three Greedy Pigs, Hairy Rapunzel, ... and Gretel as Told at the Beginning of Time is a humerous retelling of the listed tales.

In a forward, the "author" Sir Jasper Gowlings explains how he is compelled by elfin law to share the stories given to him by Feliccitatus Miserius.

As someone who enjoys alternate fairy tales I was surprised at the convincing case they made for Cinderella being mean and the story not getting out because the Prince was equally horrid and people were glad they found each other to torture. The anarchist three pigs were original. I have seen a variety of defenses made for the wolves, but that was a new one for me. Hansel and Gretel provide a very new twist on the old tale. I thought Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel were the weakest of the tales.

My suggestion with all these kinds of stories is preview before using with children. Everyone is different in what evaluating what material is comfortable for use with children. These stories are definitely focused on an older age group than normally read folk tales. I plan on picking up a copy of this book as a gift, but these books are not quite as child friendly as some of the other alternate fairy tales I have reviewed.

That Awful Cinderella

Cinderella-Pov (Steck-Vaughn Point of View Stories)was one of the first Steck Vaughn Point of View books I encountered. I had been doing Fairy Tale trials for a while and I loved the idea of a series that incorporated similar ideas. I found nursery rhymes and fairy tales were a wonderful way to engage children in thinking about the other side of the argument. It works well for teaching compare and contrast and it helps develop early debating skills.

That being said this was not the strongest entry into the series. The stepmother in Seriously, Cinderella Is SO Annoying!: The Story of Cinderella as Told by the Wicked Stepmother (The Other Side of the Story)makes a convincing case that she never set out to hurt Cinderella. Sadly, in this version, the sisters make Cinderella's case with their complaints and insults towards her. I found it did open discussions about why the sisters were jealous and how a little effort could have provided them with a better outcome when Cinderella did marry the Prince.

Equal Shmequal

What do people mean when they say they want something to be equal? Equal Shmequalhelps children understand the mathematics involved in making a game of tug of war equal between a group of animals. The focus at first is on making things fair.

As the animals work through the math involved they realize that to make things fair they have to understand the math involved with the game. Numbers alone do not make for a balanced game of tug of war. One large creature can beat a much larger group of smaller creatures if he is stronger. As the animals continue to work on the problem, they also learn that balance is not alone enough to make an equal contest. Effort is another factor that plays into the contest.

I thought the strongest part of the book was watching the animals use the seesaw to try to balance out weight as a factor in creating balanced teams. The premise was a bit unrealistic. Children will find that teams and life are rarely completely fair and balanced as the theme of this book pushes. However, I did think using animals was an interesting way to introduce children to the idea that there is a difference between having numerical balance, the same number of animals, and weight balance. From the pictures, children can see that there is balance in the numbers, but clearly not balance in the outcome until the weights are balanced. Even then, when the bear does not try, the outcome is not as expected.