Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley

This novel was about a girl named Isabel who is a peasant in a medieval village. She happens to be the daughter of a knight in the King’s palace but she is unaware throughout her life. She is raised by adoptive parents who teach her to be respectful. The story is an alternative Cinderella with a King Arthur twist. Bella’s adoptive mother is a wet nurse for the Prince so he often comes over to visit her and he becomes friends with Bella. During the war that is going on, Bella is forced to go back to live with her father in the palace but finds that he is cruel and she is treated badly by her stepmother. Julian is captured during this war and held hostage. When he is freed he returns how to find that Bella is not in the village. She returns later from the war wounded, and Julian asks for her hand in marriage. This alternative fairy tale is great because it shows the girl as the hero in the story. Often times the male figure is shown as the hero who saves the life of the girl, but in this story Bella goes out of her way to save her childhood friend, now fiancé.

Lon Po Po by Ed Young

This Chinese version of “Little Red-Riding Hood” is about the wolf coming to the home Shang, Tao, and Paotze on a day when their mother has left to go see their grandmother. She tells them not to let anyone in the house. The children let the wolf into the house and find that he isn’t their grandmother so they think of a way to get rid of him. They tell the wolf that the nuts in their tree taste delicious so they will climb up there and pick some. The wolf cannot climb the tree so they make a plan to pull him up in a basket. After dropping him when only one of the children are pulling, and when two of the children are pulling they promise that all three of them will try the next time. After dropping him from a very high distance he falls to the ground and doesn’t respond. This version of “Little Red-Riding Hood” is similar but has many differences than the American version.
I really enjoyed this book when I was in elementary school and remember thinking that it was scary at the end when the wolf dies. I liked the illistrations throughout this book and felt like they did a good job of showing the lifestyle of the Chinese characters throughout the book.

Somebody and the Three Blairs by Marilyn Tolhurst

This story was about a family who decides to go to the park for the day and while they are gone a “somebody” who is shown as a little bear comes into their home and makes himself at home. He eats the breakfast on the table, plays with the little boys toys, and even takes a nap in his crib. When the Blair’s arrive home from the park they find their home a disaster. They finally find the bear in the little boys crib but are unable to catch him before he runs out the window. This book is an interesting alternative because when I first picked up the book I read the title as the three “bears” from habit but found on the first page the family’s last name was Blair. It is a great book to turn the story around and see that the little bear is the one breaking into the house opposed to the little girl. This book is also intended for younger audiences with a lot of the text being repetitive and several of the words being repeated throughout the book.

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka

This version of the Three Little Pigs portrays the wolf as being a helpless old man who was only going to his neighbor’s home to get a cup of sugar to bake his grandmother a birthday cake. He had a cold and continued to sneeze every time he was at the door of his neighbor which ended up knocking down their whole house. He says that he wouldn’t want to just leave a ham dinner sitting in the debris so he eats the first and second pig. He tells that the newspapers wanted to make their story more interesting so they added that the wolf was a bad guy and had killed the first two pigs. This version of the three little pigs is great to use in a text set to see how the author turned the story around to make the bad guy into the good guy. This is a great book to show that there are always other sides to a story. In most traditional "Three little pig" stories the wolf is portrayed as the bad guy who knocked down the houses of the three little pigs in order to eat them. In this story it makes the audience think about the wolf's point of view and how the story may have been told wrong in the first place, although it is unrealistic.:)

Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson

This story includes the traditional Cinderella but also adds another story to compare to Cinderella’s “happy ending.” Cinder Edna also lived with her two step sisters and stepmother but contrary to Cinderella, when she was done with her work she mowed lawns and fixed parrot cages to make extra money. When the ball was coming up Edna had money to buy a new gown, while Cinderella had to rely on her fairy godmother to do all the work for her. At the ball they both fall in love with a prince, but have to leave in a hurry. When their prince’s finally find them by the shoes they had left behind and the knowledge they had learned about the girls we see that Cinderella leads a boring life following her prince. Edna, on the other hand, lives happily ever after with the prince who didn’t care about his image but more about being a good husband. This teaches a great lesson showing if Cinderella wasn’t worried about just money and fame she would have lived a happier life.

The Wolf Who Cried Boy by Bob Hartman

This story was about a little wolf who was tired of eating the same “lamburgers,” “three-pig salad,” and “sloppy does” every night and was hungry for boy. His parents explained that boys never came around the woods anymore so he was going to have to make do with their supper unless he found a boy walking in the woods. The next day he told his parents he saw a boy so they both rushed out to catch him. After they came home empty handed their supper was ruined so they had to eat snack food. The little wolf liked the outcome of this so he said the same thing the next day. After his parents caught on they would not listen to him when he saw a whole boy-scout troop outside, and the little wolf learned his lesson of telling lies. This story has a great lesson to learn on its own but would be great to compare and contrast to the original version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

So Far From the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashawa Watkins

This book was a great book on it's own but when paired in a text set with "A Year of Impossible Goodbyes" the story has a deeper meaning. These books both talked about the occupation of Korea by the Japanese during World War II. Each story was told from the point of view of a child from each of the countries. There were many differences between the way the eleven year old in this story viewed war compared to the way that myself and many other people in the United States view war. I have never lived in the country where there was a war being fought which makes a drastic difference. There are many times I forget that there is even a war going on since it is going on so far away from home. The little girl in this story loses family members and many belongings because of this war which is hard for anyone to handle, especially someone so young. There were many times while reading this story that I tried to put myself into her shoes and imagine how hard it would be to lose family and I thought about how important family is to me. The video we watched in class of the children talking about these two books really shows how important it is to look at both sides of a situation and realize that while you may side with the "underdog" narrator in one of the stories, there is always a different side and it may not be easy for those on that side either.