![]() There are many folktales that try to teach children that greed can do more harm than good. This might be a good book for older children learning about other cultures while also learning about the joy we get from helping others rather than only thinking of ourselves. Ma Ling tricks the emperor in order to save himself and get back to using the paintbrush to help others. ![]() A greedy emperor hears about the boy and demands selfish things of Ma Ling. He dreams one night and receives a magic paintbrush with which he does good deeds. This classic folktale from China tells of a poor boy who wants more than anything to be a painter, but he lacks supplies. He realizes the error of his ways and Rani makes him promise that from then on, he only takes as much rice as he actually needs. The raja doesn’t mind parting with one grain of rice, but by the end of the story, he has given Rani more than one billion grains of rice. ![]() She does this by asking him for only one grain of rice, but that for the next 30 days he will have to double the amount. A smart village girl manages to trick the raja into giving her most of the rice so that she can feed her people. When the famine does come, the raja does not make good on his promises and instead lets his people go hungry. He promises to store the rice in case of famine. In this tale a raja decrees that everyone in his province must give him nearly all of their yearly rice crops. One Grain of Rice is a marvelous mathematical folktale by Demi that both of my girls really enjoyed. The list could go on and on, but here are ten that we have recently read that are completely non-traditional for mainstream western world and quite wonderful. One of the things that I find especially fascinating is reading folktales from a wide variety of cultures to see how similar situations are handled differently and how each culture tries to educate its children on how they are supposed to behave. There are so many tales that have been passed down through the generations and we have learned so many valuable lessons from them. Folktales are such a wonderful part of children’s literature. ![]()
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