Monday, February 7, 2011

Article given be by Mia Michael

http://www.google.com/m/url?client=ms-android-verizon&ei=tttQTYC7FpDSqQO8_uj2AQ&gl=us&hl=en&q=http://www.canadianwritersgroup.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Enchanted-Stories.pdf&source=android-browser-type&ved=0CBgQFjAC&usg=AFQjCNEY7eg9YIsnRewDocrzoMggTNNIWg

Dear Friends and Family,

The above long and crazy link is for an article given to me in the antiquated form called paper. The gift was bestowed by Mia Michael, the wise kindergarten teacher I worked with in my first year in Monterey in 2001. After not seeing each other for almost seven years, I gave Mia a gift of music, and she gave me a gift of wisdom.

It struck a chord because of the joy Liam receives from reading the Narnia series--we are currently rereading the series beginning at book 1--and the intense interest Crispin shows in the plots of ballet stories such as Swan Lake, Cinderella, and Daphnis and Chloe. Both boys look forward to the bedtime Grimms' Fairy Tale I tell them by candlelight; now that they are getting older, I don't have to dance around some of the stronger mythic images in the tales (in the German Cinderella, the stepmother gives the two stepsisters a knife to cut off a toe and heel, respectively, to fit in the slipper--only to by ratted on by two pigeons in the magic hazel tree planted over the grave of Cinderella's mother. This part is not in Prokofiev's ballet, by the by). I have started going through the Pantheon collection of Grimms' tales and telling each story in order (unless the story is too violent or too weird) to the boys--when they are about 12 and 8 I may be done.

Liam plans to compose ballets for many of the stories he hears and books he reads. In just about every book Crispin hears read to him, he tells me which character he will be when the plot is acted out.

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