FEAR - FEARS - FEARFUL |
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FEAR - FEARS - FEARFUL Stories, Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, Legends, Myths, History, Nursery Rhymes, Fantasy & Facts Scroll down or click on your choice below • SOS: Searching Out Stories/Info - Fear-Fears Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians |
SOS: SEARCHING OUT STORIES AND INFORMATION ABOUT FEAR - FEARS - FEARFUL
Advice, Comments and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians
(excerpts from Storytell posts plus original research)
Book titles and online links are in blue and underlined. Click on them for more information.
Story titles are in quotation marks.
To retell these stories, get permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
Storytell posts are added chronologically as they are received by Story Lovers World.
1) Query:
The story is generally about a giant who terrorizes a village. Only one person is brave enough to face him, usually a king, but sometimes a little girl or a child. When the challenger goes toward the giant, the giant gets smaller and smaller the closer he comes...until he can fit in the palm of her/his hand. When asked his name, he says, "My name is Fear."
Does anyone know if there is an original author of this story or where I might find it?
Erica 6/27/06
RESPONSES:
a) I have used this story a few times in my work with kids with chronic illness... adapted it more towards the hospitalization experience than the illness itself. But the only version I have ever discovered is by Joan Grant, Monster Who Grew Small (Creative Short Stories)(1987). The notes say only that it is an adaptation of an Egyptian folktale. Hope this helps.
Tom 6/27/06
b) It's called Monster Who Grew Small from Ethiopia. And I'll include the whole post from SuZie, but here's what her post gave as the answer to the monster's name: "Some people call me famine, some call me pestilence. The saddest people of all call me by their own name. But most people, most people call me What-might-happen."
SuZie
Ina 6/27/06
The WHOLE post of story follows:
StoryHatS@aol.com wrote:
There's a story from Ethiopia about a Monster Who Grew Small that might fit this category of demon. The tale is about a boy (Miobe the Frightened One) who thinks he is a coward and undertakes a journey to find courage.With each challenge he gains some self-confidence. His last challenge is a monster who lives in a cave at the top of a mountain. Everyone in the village below is paralyzed with fear, but the boy offers to slay the beast for them. When he first sees the monster it is the size of three royal barges and smoke is curling from its nostrils. Frightened, the boy keeps climbing but decides not to look at the creature until he is halfway up the mountain, else he might be too scared to approach the beast.
When he next looks, the monster is only the size of one royal barge (which is still pretty big). Then the creature snorts flame at him, the boy panics and is halfway to the foot of the mountain before he can make his feet stop running. Now when he looks the monster is the size of five royal barges.
The boy finds it curious that the monster grows smaller when he approaches and bigger when he runs away. He thinks that perhaps, if he gets close enough, the monster might grow small enough for him to kill with his dagger. To keep from being too scared, the boy closes his eyes tight and runs up the hill, fast - before he can change his mind.
When he opens his eyes, he is at the opening to the cave but he sees no monster. He enters the cave and sees nothing to be afraid of. The boy is wondering if he ran to the wrong cave when he feels something hot touch his foot. He looks down and sees the monster, but now it is the size of a kitten. He picks it up and it curls up in his palm, making a gentle sound halfway between a purr and a bubbling kettle. The boy decides to keep it for a pet - besides, it might help start his cooking fire each day.
With the monster asleep in his hands, he returns to the village. The people hail him as a monster slayer, but he says that he didn't need to slay it. Awestruck, they gather to look at the creature. He explains how it grew larger when he ran away and smaller when he approached. A young girl asks, "What's its name?" The boy replies that he didn't think to ask. The monster wakes, yawning a puff of smoke, looks around at the people and says in a voice as clear as a bell, "Some people call me famine, some call me pestilence. The saddest people of all call me by their own name. But most people, most people call me What-might-happen."
SuZie
c) I found a version on line, which sounds a bit adapted. It states the name of the story is "The Giant and the Little Girl" but doesn't give a source. Here is the text from the site:
There once was a place where all the people were happy and content.Everyone was friendly and neighborly. Even the dogs and cats playedtogether.Then one day a stranger was seen walking toward the village: a tall, tallstranger. As the stranger, who was a giant, came closer and closer, thepeople all ran into their houses and wouldn't come out.
The giant entered the village. He was enormous, towering over everything.All of a sudden a little girl stepped out on her porch. She jumped downfrom her porch. Her family yelled, "STOP! COME BACK! That's a giant!" Butshe didn't stop. She began to walk toward the giant.
The strangest thing happened. As the child walked toward the giant, hegrew smaller and smaller. Soon he was the same size as the girl. As shecame beside the giant, she towered over him. She stooped down and gentlypicked the giant up in her hands, asking, "What's your name?"
The giant whispered, "My name is F-E-A-R! Help me!! I have a terrible problem. I guess I look strange. When I meet people they are afraid of me. And when people are afraid of me, I suddenly grow into a giant andeverybody runs away from me. YOU are not afraid of me, so I stayed small. Do you get it? It's crazy! Please help me!"
Skipping Stones | Multicultural Children's Magazine
http://www.skippingstones.org/sample-23.htm
Karen C. 6/27/06
d) An interesting tidbit about Joan Grant. I tell a story called The Blue Faience Hippopotamusthat she wrote. I was rather taken with the story and did some research on her. She's from England (probably deceased by now). She claimed that from the time she was young that she had "far vision." By this she meant she remembered her past lives. In one life she lived in Egypt and had a handmaid who told her stories. She never claimed authorship for the Egyptian stories because they were not her original stories. She also wrote other stories that she claimed authorship but not the Egyptian folktales. Just something I thought you'd like to know about.
Marilyn K. 6/27/06
e) I wonder whether author Dick Gackenbach used that story for the basis of his Harry and the Terrible Whatzit. In this story, Harry is afraid to go into the cellar because he thinks that's where the 2 headed, 3 clawed, 6 toed long haired whatzit lives. When he faces the monster it gets smaller and smaller..."because your not afraid of me anymore." Cute story. I used to tell it often, but haven't in several years. I didn't realize that it had such roots!
Marilyn K. 6/27/06
f) Try that again...there is a similar story in a beginning reader's book (16 pages) called Boggywooga (Sunshine Books)by Joy Cowley. The title character is a monster that scares everyone but Officer Susan. She (quite literally) faces it down--the monster shrinks everytime it threatens her and she threatens it back, until it it quite small. I used a similar plot for Seamus and the Pooka, which has become my most-requested repeat story. So many things are only big when you're afraid of them.
Cathy Jo S. 6/28/06
g) This is too perfect a tie-in to ignore -- I have just received a review copy of Kathleen Ragan's Outfoxing Fear: Folktales from Around the World (Aesop Prize (Awards)). I haven't read enough to write the review yet, but even the little I've read has convinced me that this is a "must have" book like Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World
.
Her introduction discusses children's response to fearsome situations, building and wrecking twin towers with their blocks, and then being able to move on to other issues while the adults are still watching 9/11 replays on the TV. Her very first story "What Are You the Most Scared Of?" (from Japan) sent me off to bed with a chuckle, and then the realization of an echo of Wayne Dyer and Angela Davis that what we think about is what we will find ourselves surrounded with. . . Power of positive (or negative) thinking . . .what we send out is what will return to us. . . And all that just from the first few pages!!!
Mary G. 6/28/06
h) To the point on fear, we've always liked the line we heard from Michael Pritchard: "Fear is that little dark room where negatives are developed."Best story on fear in our repertoire is "Yumi's Courage" from Wayfarer Tomm. You can find a recording of our version on our first CD "Words to the Wise."
Text of Yumi's Courage: http://www.healingstory.org/listserv/2002/archive1127.html
http://www.spont.com/w2wcd.htm
http://www.spont.com/
Tom and Sandy F. 6/28/06
i) New Zealander Joy Cowley's "Mrs. Wishy-Washy" books sell well in our store in California, but we don't get much else by her.
Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Farm
Mrs. Wishy-Washy board book
Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Splishy Sploshy Day
Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Christmas
Mrs. Wishy-Washy Makes a Splash
Mrs. Wishy-washy's Scrubbing Machine
Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Tub (The Story Box, Level 1, Set B)
Activity packets to enrich Mrs. Wishy Washy and her friends
Taffy Thomas tells [and self-published at one time] a story about a giant who is what each person fears most and similarly shrinks when confronted.
http://www.taffythomas.co.uk/
Tom F. 6/28/06
Created 2006; last update 9/18/09.
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