English Children's Literature(Week10)

• Why Mosquitoes Buzz in Human's Ear- Frame story

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Tale is a picture book by Verna Aardema and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon told in the form of a cumulative tale written for young children, which tells an African legend. In this origin story, the mosquito lies to a lizard, who puts sticks in his ears and ends up frightening another animal, which down a long line causes a panic. In the end, an owlet is killed and the owl is too sad to wake the sun until the animals hold court and find out who is responsible. The mosquito is eventually found out, but it hides in order to escape punishment. So now it constantly buzzes in people's ears to find out if everyone is still angry at it.

▴video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAWH3aXE7DE 

▴Guilty conscionce→ the monkey



▴Pythia (Python)



The name Pythia is derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. In etymology the Greeks derived this place name from the verb, πύθειν (púthein) "to rot", which refers to the sickly sweet smell of the decomposition of the body of the monstrous Python after he was slain by Apollo. Pythia was the House of Snakes.

▴ Characters
 Mosquito - Likes to exaggerate to appear more important
 Iguana – Easily annoyed by nonsense
 Python – Sensitive and suspicious
 Rabbit – Easily frightened and fearful
 Crow – Messenger, alert to danger
 Monkey – Excitable and easily thrown into a panic
 King Lion – King of the jungle community
 Mother Owl – Devoted mother and the character that wakes the sun
 Baby Owlets – Babies still in nest and not yet able to fly

▴It was... 

monkey→ killed

crow→ alarm

rabbit→ startle

python→ scare

iguana→ frighten

mosquito→ annoy

• Coyote

The coyote is a canid native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the gray wolf and slightly smaller than its other close relatives, the eastern wolf and the red wolf, being roughly the North American equivalent to the Old World golden jackal, though it is larger and more predatory. 

◎Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner

Wile E. Coyote (also known simply as "The Coyote") and The Road Runner are a duo of characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. In the cartoons, Coyote repeatedly attempts to catch and subsequently eat the Road Runner, a fast-running ground bird, but is never successful. Coyote, instead of his species' animal instincts, uses absurdly complex contraptions (sometimes in the manner of Rube Goldberg) and elaborate plans to pursue his prey, which always comically backfire with Wile normally getting injured by the slapstick humor.

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived.

• Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer. Among his novels are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (or, in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective). It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. It was criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur "nigger", despite arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist.

▸Plantation era

The Plantation Era, also loosely referred to as the Antebellum Era, was a period in the history of the Southern United States, from the late 18th century until the start of the American Civil War in 1861 (which ended slavery in the United States and destroyed much of the economic landscape of the South), marked by the economic growth of the South, based on slave-driven plantation farming.

The plantation system eventually grew to form the industrial and social frame of government in the Southern slave states, while the associated institution of slavery became the basis of the Southern social system, ideology, and a set of psychological patterns.