Last time I tried to be very positive in my assessment and subsequent comments and T think that was a change for the better. Now however, I think I may have gone too far in that direction. For this week I will try to mix a more negative and positive approach to get a nice balanced set of thoughts on a story.
The Pigeon and the Crow:
This story is dark, especially for a children's tale. I get that it is warning of greed and lying and whatnot, but as a cautionary tale it is implying that if you steal even a bit of meat you will be skinned alive and killed! Maybe that was true, but a story for children is usually expected to have a bit of a softer edge to it. Maybe that is just my culture speaking though, a lot of Jataka tales end with the foolish animal's death....
That all being said, I did quite enjoy the imagery, and the choice of making them birds flying about being sorta friends was a fun visual in my mind while I read it. Overall although I was a bit concerned about the tone, I quite liked it.
The value of a Brother:
This story is... confusing to say the least. I comment on it because it is so simple, yet the meaning and explanations seem to allude me. The one thing I know for sure is that it is a story teaching young girls of the time that they must be married. Besides for that there is the part about a brother being more important than your husband of son, but I'm not entirely sure that's what it meant...
The story itself has an interesting premise, thios woman cleverly getting these three men out of a scrape they are in. Where it goes wrong is with the logic, which I hesitate to complain about in a children's book except that the logic is part way important to the meaning and I just can't seem to sniff that out.
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