004. CuentaCuarentenas INFANTIL en inglés
004. CuentaCuarentenas INFANTIL en inglés
CuentaCuarentenas
17 APR 2020 · The Alpha-Bet-Josh, a “flash story” by Catalina Florina Florescu, is a 641-word striking piece of prose that leaves no one indifferent. The unexpected turn of the plot follows the principle of communicating vessels, since the very first reply foretells the denouement, but forgetful readers (like myself) focus on family relationships, affective deficiency disorder, and planetary concerns. The title, in itself premonitory, not phonetically far from the Spanish plural “alfabetos” with a wink to Borges’s Aleph, gives us the dimension of this boy’s tragedy, which is in fact the tragedy of all today’s sons and daughters, who cannot solve the problems of the world (hunger, pollution, curiosity not as the basis of scientific search, but as the result of over-informatized societies). A Greta Thunberg complex erodes Josh, just as the Aleph torments all those who catch a glimpse of it ever after.
12 APR 2020 · Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a 19th century anonymous fairy tale that British poet Robert Southey published in 1837 under the title "The Story of the Three Bears" describing a badly-behaved old woman who walks through a forest and enters the home of three bears. She eats their porridge, sits on their chairs and sleeps in one of their beds. When the bears return and discover her, she wakes up, jumps out of the window, and is never seen again. A second version of this tale replaced the ugly old woman with a beautiful child which definitely gained audience. The little girl, named Goldilocks remained as the central character over the years. The bears also changed from three bachelors into Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. This tale teaches children not to be so curious, not to intrude and to respect other people’s spaces and habits. They might feel identified with the puzzled small cub who repeats the formula “somebody has been eating my porridge/ sitting on my chair / sleeping in my bed”.
12 APR 2020 · This is a tale with a moral: you cannot expect help from the others if you never help those in need. The magic figure is again three. There are three elements, representing the three realms, that interpellate both girls: an oven, a cow and a tree (a human invention, an animal and a plant), which are decisive in the plot development. The good, helpful and clever sister responds satisfactorily, the evil, idle, ill-tempered one will discover that she is not able to prevail alone, she needs help from other creatures to escape revenge from the wicked witch. This story was published in English Fairy Tales, retold by Flora Annie Steel (1922), illustrated by Arthur Rackham, but a version of it can be found in Grimm Brothers’ collection as well as a similar plot can be traced in Ion Creanga’s “Fata mosneagului si fata babei” that can be listened to in Romanian, Spanish and Catalan on CUENTACUARENTENAS.
12 APR 2020 · To raise chickens for eggs. That is what logic requires. But nothing obeys logic in Domnica Radulescu’s garden, this garden of Eden where a man and a woman start anew. However, they are not Eve and Adam, but Lili and Ben, not man and wife, but mother and son, because motherhood is a tighter bond, strong enough for such a heavy burden like recreating humankind, giving birth to a more reasonable organization that does not fight, does not let peers die from hunger, does not allow blood sheds.
Strangely enough, in Domnica’s Radulescu dystopic garden it’s April, like our quarantine! The verdict “April is the cruelest month” echoes the sorrow of a poet who longs for “forgetful snows” on his (waste) land, instead of spring renaissance with its creatures and sentiments breeding, mixing and stirring.
The egg, a metaphor for life, beginning, renewal, but also the most visible side of maternity, of which the womb is only a synecdoche, solves the plot. The “old world” had succumbed to food wars, floods, draughts, and (again premonitorily), a “planetary illness that put a stop to just everything”. Domnica Radulescu’s love for all the languages in the world surfaces in the many names of an egg, together with colours, sizes and memories. Somehow this story seems to suggest that this couple’s knowledge of many languages is precisely the skill that helps them repopulate the devastated planet.
10 APR 2020 · hoto by Lars Odemark on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Autor:
Lindley Dodd
Lengua original:
inglés
Lengua lectura:
inglés
Lee:
Alicia
Zebny
“Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy” (2002) is a series of stories for pre-school children written by Linley Dodd, a New Zealander writer and illustrator.
Hairy Maclary has become a classic bedtime storybook in New Zealand and Australia which is based on the cyclic accumulation through repetition of elements selected according to their phonetic qualities. Thus, the ensemble of words making up the nursery rhyme grounds on alliterations. The progressive story technique reminds us of another well-known classic: “The Gigantic Turnip” or "Old MacDonald Had a Farm".
10 APR 2020 · Photo by Alexas Fotos on Pexels
Autor:
Julia Donaldson
Lengua original:
inglés
Lengua lectura:
inglés
Lee:
Alicia
Zebny
The famous tale by Julia Donaldson follows the structure of traditional (animal) tales, in which the travel is a metaphor for life and the hallmarks on the road are symmetrical, each one with its own symbolism and significance. The three encounters with other lodgers of the dark wood previous to the appearance of the Gruffalo are reproduced afterwards allowing children to capture the vocabulary related to each of them and their habitat. The rhymed format artistically organized into dialogues is a pleasure to listen to and it is equally useful for children to retain plot and characters’ features. Have you ever seen a Gruffalo? Well, it is about time you met one.
10 APR 2020 · Photo by Picography on Pixabay
Autor:
Nick Greaves & Rod Clement
Lengua original:
inglés
Lengua lectura:
inglés
Lee:
Cathy
Zebny
“The First Zebra” tells us the story of how animals, in the beginning, were all similar after their creation. Only later on, they were all summoned by the creator to be given the opportunity to select their colourful coats and their horns. This tale introduces us into the African zoology with its variety of species and into the legendary substratum of the cultures living on the oldest continent of humankind. The lion’s beauty, the elephant`s majesty, the rhinoceros’s shortsightedness and the zebra’s gluttony are ancestral categories humans used to define and describe their surrounding world.
10 APR 2020 · Photo by Jean van der Meulen on Pexels
Autor:
Daniel Errico
Lengua original:
inglés
Lengua lectura:
inglés
Lee:
Joyce
Monroe
“And That Was the Oddest of Things” by Daniel Errico displays a refreshing narrative style that combines fantastic facts and exotic (at least for Europeans) animals such as lemurs, penguins, octopuses or giraffes. A very attractive and funny way to get introduced into the universe of fantastic animal tales, the formula chosen by Errico resorts to versified epic, with simple catchy rhymes and with a metrics that helps an easy memorizing. Children can follow the plot effortlessly and even anticipate words due to the versified forms. All in all, a lovely incursion into fantasy for little and not so little ones.
10 APR 2020 · Belonging to universal folklore, this is a tale whose origins are probably much older than its mid-19th century printing date in Great Britain and Ireland. Again, we are before an animal tale, in which the three little pigs are personified, each representing a human attitude towards life and its most immediate consequences. Its fable structure, with a moral about the advantage of taking action before a problem actually occurs, makes this story an excellent first approach to values such as caution. It is a story that invites us to reflection, as early as in our childhood years, on values such as precaution, which helps to solve difficulties and confirms the old Spanish proverbs: "To foresee is to win" (which, in turn, reminds us of the famous quote from Don Quixote: a known enemy is a half defeated one ) and "You may rest when you have bread for May, and firewood for April". By being vigilant and not letting himself be misled by appearances, the third little pig saves himself and his more unwary brothers, from evil.
10 APR 2020 · La Fontaine's fables represent the culmination of French classicism, and one of the reference works of French literature of all time. We have chosen three of the best known fables to share with you: The Grasshopper and the Ant; The Fox and the Crow; The Oak and the Reed. Inspired by classic models and seventeenth-century tales from Oriental sources, these fables are the means chosen by the author to criticise in verse some of the most pernicious flaws of the society of his time and future ones, which renders timeless value to these works.
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