Writing Fairy Tales

Once Upon a Time: Writing Your Own Fairy Tale      By Nancy Lowen 

Picture Window Books        2009

Fairy and Folk Tale books are constantly in demand.  They are ideally situated to leverage students’ previous knowledge as they learn the elements of story structure. This provides a fertile ground for scaffolding students into authorship as they negotiate and play with how to apply story structure, elements, and conventions.

This book is  designed to provide the tools for second graders (my estimation) to begin to think like authors as they as they craft and arrange the building blocks of story elements to make their own creations.

The book uses “Red Riding Hood” as an example. It walks readers through the story while it points out the elements structure and features of fairy tales, and how they are applied in this case. The following elements are emphasized.

- Setting, characters, plot, and dialog

- The use of  warnings as a common convention in  fairy tales

- The use of magical elements

- Greed as a common theme in this genre 

- The use of tricks as a story convention

-Making the reader privy to a secret that the main character doesn’t know about.

- The use of repetition & of differing approaches to problem solving

- The convention of happy endings. (Here I would disagree with the author. She is  thinking in post Perrault terms. The original stories were quite, if you would excuse the pun, quite Grimm. Then again, what are you going to tell second graders?

                                                                                                    

The back section has a very, very brief section of tips on getting started in writing your own stories.

Of course this book sounds useful, but it handicaps itself by giving very limited options in terms of story creation. However, we all have imaginations that can easily reach beyond this handicap. This has the potential to translate into a powerful author’s experience for the kids as they extend beyond the strictures and structures of this book.

I feel that the greatest value of this book is in the template of story structure, elements, and conventions that it presents. Students can readily present ideas, concepts that go beyond the author’s treatment on creating your own stories.

Another ideal use would be to present this book to older students and have them recreate it for another genre.