The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau

Multicultural and International Literature: Biography

Markel, M. (2012). The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.

The book, The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau, tells the very inspiring tale of the famous French artist, Henri Rousseau.  Rousseau begins the majority of his life as a toll collector, until he is almost 40 years old.  Then he decides that he would like to be an artist.  Since Rousseau has very little money and cannot afford art lessons, he teaches himself, studying the fine works of art on display at the Louvre museum.  For many years, Henri Rousseau puts his paintings into gallery shows and critics laugh at them.  Eventually, Henri begins to paint works of art that very few people laugh at, in fact, many famous artists begin to appreciate his work.  This book is an "underdog" kind of biography on a subject that isn't as hi-lighted in the classroom.

Similar to the story Noah Webster and His Words, I think the story of Henri Rousseau could be a great supplemental text to a larger topic.  For instance, if your class wanted to study famous artist or perhaps Pablo Picasso, I would say The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau would be a great addition to the study.  Children's books are a great way to help break down heavy topics for students in the upper elementary grades.  I personally enjoy stories that are written about a person who had very close ties to very famous people in history.  John Lewis In the Lead, is another story that I feel does the same thing. I plan on having a lot of supplemental texts, that help support and perhaps give a new perspective on a given topic that we are studying.

Cinderella, Cendrillon, and Pear Blossom

Folk Literature/ Multicultural and International Literature/ Caldecott Medalist

San Souci, R. (2002). Cendrillon: A caribbean cinderella. New York, NY: Aladdin Paperbacks.

Climo, S. The korean cinderella. Harper Collins Publishers.

Brown, M. (1997). Cinderella . Aladdin Paperbacks.

The story of "Cinderella" is a very popular one.  Almost every culture has their own version of the magical fairy tale.  I pulled three different versions of the famous Cinderella story, first Caldecott Medalist, Cinderella translated by Marcia Brown, Cendrillon; A Caribbean Cinderella by Robert D. San Souci, and The Korean Cinderella by Shirley Climo.  All of these books follow the general story of the classic Cinderella Story with their own different international spins.

With the famous story of "Cinderella", it seems that almost every culture has it's own version of the classic tale.  Using either these three versions, or pulling more versions of the fairy tale, students could explore the similarities and differences between different countries and cultures.  Using the Wordle App, I created three Word Clouds.  I copied and pasted the whole story into the Wordle App, and it generates a Word Cloud.  Each time a word is repeated throughout the story, the word is represented in a larger font on the Word Cloud.  This is a really cool tool to use to show the commonalities between the stories.  For instance, the Cinderella Word Cloud and The Pear Blossom Word Cloud both contain large words for Prince/Magistrate, signifying that the idea of a prince with the Cinderella is a commonality between the two stories.  I think the more stories you would be able to generate a Word Cloud for, the more interesting it would be to connect the similarities and differences between the actual written stories.