Skip to main content

Reading Notes: Alaska, Part A

Alaskan Legends Unit by Katherine Berry Judson

This was an interesting set of stories, mainly to do with Raven which is seen as almost a god in the tales. In the first few, Raven creates a bean plant and out of the pod comes Man. Raven then creates animals and birds for him, as well as a wife. More men arrive out of the pod and he creates wives for them too. When children are born he helps them to grow fast.

Later, he takes Man to the Skyland where there are dwarves and then into the sea. He creates bears to kill people because they are taking over and killing too many animals. Finally, angry, he takes away the sun but his brother dies and is reborn and Raven likes him so he is able to get the sun back.

There is also a flood story and an explanation on how tides work. All of them have a raven in them, manipulating things. Raven marries a goose but is unable to keep up when they migrate. Raven eats a bunch of seals as well and later tricks Pitch into melting. Raven also tries to eat a marmot but is tricked.

Raven also gets the light back and names the other birds and rolls up a lake to steal it from beavers. It is definitely a tricky character. The cool thing about Raven is he can push up his beak like a mask and become human.


Photo Credit: tumblr

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Week 3 Wikipedia Trail

For this assignment, I started with the article about the Canterbury Tales, since that is what I am working on for my project. First article:  The_Canterbury_Tales This one is very intensive and covers not only a premise of the story but also a historical context, the themes, and the style of the writing. I imagine I am going to use this article a lot when I begin working on my project. From this article, there are links to all the other sections and a bunch of pictures of the different pilgrims. Second article:  General_Prologue This is the prologue and the beginning of the story. It not only gives a premise to the storytelling competition, it gives a background of the pilgrims and their destination. I am going to use a similar premise in my project and will refer to this article when I am working on my introduction. One thing I am debating is whether I will have a "Geoffrey Chaucer" character in my story. In the original, the author inserted himself into the tale, I d...

Week 3 Story: Hector's Fate

Hector's Fate Achilles was approaching, fast as the wind, and Hector stood to face him. He leaned casually on his spear, by the gate of his beloved city, unfazed by the valiant warrior, the best of the Greeks. As the gap between them closed, Hector took up his spear in a fluid motion and readied it. They stood and faced one another, the greatest of the Greeks against the greatest of the Trojans. Despite the sweat, glistening at Achille's golden brow, the mighty warrior appeared fresh as if he had just started the fight. There was no sign of fatigue in his limbs or his eyes, keen and ready. It was as if Hector was looking on a god and not a mortal, yet his resolve never wavered, his courage never left him. He stood firm, the defender of Troy. Achilles hefted his massive spear, a gift from the gods, which only he could wield. He threw first and his spear flew straight. It would have struck true but Hector saw it coming and ducked. The spear hit the ground behind him and lo...

Week 10 Lab: Research

This week I researched potential topics for my project's second story. I mainly browsed different urban legend articles on Snoops. I still haven't completely nailed down what my story will be about but I have a few ideas and even if urban legends aren't the primary topic, given my characters, I think they might come up. And to be honest, I am never super clear about how my story will go when I begin so I think I'll be fine.  Here are a few links to articles I looked at:  Scary Urban Legends 25 Hottest Urban Legends Most Popular Urban Legends of 2015      <- this one was mostly just funny. I didn't know most of them so I guess I am out of the loop when it comes to Urban Legends.  I looked up "Confused" on google and this came up. It does not portray my feelings but it did make me confused as to why it was a result so here you go:  Photo Credit: maxpixel