Essay for Week 3: Not Your Average Bible Story

Cat Meets Dog (1865) authored by Laura Valentine published by Scibner, Welford and Co. via Wikimedia Commons

I really liked the Jewish Fairy Tales Unit. One of my favorite stories this unit was The Quarrel of the Cat and Dog. I was surprised that this story existed because up to this point every fairy tale in the unit was loosely based on traditional bible stories or linked to a story in some way. I am very much a dog person. Actually, I hate cats. So I was not surprised when the cat was the one to ruin the relationship between the two best friends. Another of my favorite stories this unit was The Higgledy-Piggledy Palace. First things first, I love the title of this story. It is so goofy and you know that something crazy is going to happen. I could just imagine the confusion on the pharaoh's face as something that he cannot see is beating him for trying to touch Sarah. The poor pharaoh must have been thinking that he was losing his mind! One of my least favorite stories was the The Fairy Frog. I just could not really get into this story. I don't think that I could spend all my money on a box with a frog in it. Even if it was my parents dying wish. I also don't understand how they kept feeding it and spent all of their money on the frog when they were starving. Honestly, I probably would have cooked me up a giant frog's legs. Things only got weirder when the giant frog started talking and giving the people all of these weird gifts and abilities for taking care of it. One thing that surprised me in this unit was the unicorns. When I think of unicorns I think of something about the size of a horse with a horn on its head and is usually white as snow. In the Jewish Fairy Tales, the unicorns were huge. In one story they were as large as a mountain. Definitely not the typical unicorn you read about and see in movies.