Counter Narrative Text

In my counter narrative text, I am telling the story of "Cinderella" from the stepsister's point of view. I follow more of the original story where Cinderella's father is absent and is not there all of the time. I also changed it to the stepsisters being little girls, while Cinderella is a teenager. The story is a scrapbook, where the sister, Lucy, tries to remind Cinderella about how good it is to be a part of a family and all the memories that the family share. I took the blended family side of Cinderella and turned it on its head.

In making the focus of Cinderella about the blended family, the sisters do not seem mean nor does the step mother. It seems more like the family is trying to learn how to become one family instead of two. Also, in making the step sisters younger and Cinderella older, Cinderella is seen as a little bit self absorbed and not as caring as she is portrayed in the original story. These slight differences make a big difference overall to the story. Cinderella is not a fairy tale princess and the step mother is not so evil.

Research In the Community

During the research in the community assignment I learned a lot about D.C. and the media. I learned that D.C. has very diverse communities and that the media provides multiple examples of children's literature.

When I was doing research in the bookstore, I had some issues. I went to the Borders in Friendship Heights and I was disappointed to see that there was not a lot of stories that focused on diversity. First, the picture books are all the way in the back of the store and hard to find unless you stumble on them. When I searched for picture books that discussed ethnicity or diversity, I only came up with two. The books were not shelved properly and there were no labels to what type of books they were. There was no order to it. Maybe the store felt that young children only pull books out of shelves so there is no point on having order, but I still felt that there was something lacking. Perhaps this is because Friendship Heights is a shopping district and the area is more for adults who are stopping in the bookstore after shopping.

This unlike the library in Cleveland Park where it is easy to find the children's section and there is clearly labeled section for different cultures. When walking through the neighborhood and in the library I saw many diverse cultures. I think the types of books you find depends upon what type of neighborhood you are in.

There are some things that surprised me during the media section of the research. I was shocked at how many companies used fairytales to help their product. Red Bull for example, uses fairytales in multiple commercials. They use Rapanzeal, Aladdin, and the Frog Prince. However, these commercials are quite sexual and so they are using fairytales in a different way.

I was also surprised at how many websites there are for children's literature. There are many websites that want to help teachers, librarians, and parents, find the best books possible for children. A majority of these websites display books that tackle certain topics that might be difficult, such as feelings and loss. I am glad that there are so many resources for teachers to help their students see themselves in the stories that they read.

Some new insights I discovered is that there is a whole community of people who care about what is being read in the classroom. I never thought it was an issue until I went online and saw how many people cared about children's literature.