3 Comments

Re: Pick any traditional story — folklorists have catalogued multiple versions of it.

For anyone interested, here's an article on the hairy history of attempts to catalog Indo-European tales:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/aarne-thompson-uther-tale-type-index-fables-fairy-tales

Growing up, this site was my go-to resource for maxing out my library card with as many retellings as possible:

https://surlalunefairytales.com/

- The Annotated Tales section includes subsections on Modern Interpretations and a Book Gallery for each tale.

- The database project a great resource for locating tales from all over the world by their source book title or tale title

Multi-Lingual Folk Tale Database

http://www.mftd.org/

On this site, you can read popular folk tales from all over this world, in their original or a translation.

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Re: fall in love with a story like we help kids fall in love with visual art.

Sometimes after reading a great story it can take an hour or two for me transition from "living" in the story back to the "real world". Several of my kids have the same tendency to hyperfocus, so I know that if they read/hear a great book or watch a movie, there is going to be energetic themed play afterwards and to plan accordingly!

Luc Travers's "Touching the Art" book brought up the concept of art as a talisman and I think stories can be used the same way. As inspired, one could take on the persona of a character in a story and channel their strength to help deal with real-life situations. I'm having a hard time of thinking of specific examples, but I've also used stories to get me into the mood to work on things so that it's easier to focus on what may not normally hold my attention as well.

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> How might we start small, now?

A challenge for you: what is the core story (Cosmology?) of Egan Education? Not just a history, but the epic version with heroes, villains, disasters, climax, catharsis, etc.

Why not lay it out, and keep alluding to it in every post so it sinks deeper and deeper into our minds?

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