Week 5 Famous Last Words: Trickster Hare!

I got so into working on hare stories this morning that I forgot about the #Ungrading Twitter chat today; luckily somebody pinged me so I was able to jump in in time for that (so many faculty members are different schools are trying to think about new/different ways to do grading, grade less, or go gradeless!)... and then I jumped right back into writing the hare stories: it was so much fun! These are the first African "tiny tale" stories that I have written, which means they are the first in what is going to be a six-month adventure that will lead to three African trickster tale books by the time I am done. The goal is to finish the Rabbit book on July 1, the Spider book on August 1, and the Tortoise book on September 1.

If it is all as much fun as today, it will be a good six months!

These are the stories I wrote today: Hare Stories. I made little screenshots of them. You can click on each one to see a bigger version, or go to the story at the website.

The Drought

Hare and Tortoise

Hare's Punishment

Hare and Lion

Hare and Elephant

Hare and Buffalo

Hare and Leopard

I didn't really choose the stories in any particular way, except that I knew for sure I wanted an example of a tar-baby story since that one is so famous because of the Brer Rabbit version. So, I started with that one, and then just picked stories I liked from my spreadsheet.

And the spreadsheet is now... GIGANTIC. I have over 500 stories bookmarked with hare or rabbit from African sources. Admittedly, some of those are duplicates, but still: I will clearly have NO trouble at all coming up with 200 stories for an African Rabbit book. The problem will not be finding stories, but deciding just which ones to include.

That is a problem I can live with.

The power already went out here once today because of ice on the powerlines... it's not as cold here as it is Norman so I guess that is actually making it worse since the precipitation comes down as freezing rain. Anyway, I hope everybody does okay when the big snow hits Norman tomorrow. I actually saw them using the word blizzard in one of the forecasts. I don't know exactly what it takes to make a blizzard... but a blizzard is sure not what I would expect in Norman.

Meanwhile, I'll be under the warm sun of Africa, thanks to the magic of books. Lots more to read and learn this weekend...