My Myth

My Myth: Locked up Dragon

            Long ago, in the age of dinosaurs, a tyrannosaurus rex sits over her fresh eggs that she just laid.  There were three eggs, they all looked identical to each other. As time went on the mother T. rex started to notice a strange spot on one of the eggs. It was a dark circle spot on the top of the egg, which seems to be swallowing the egg as time moves on. The mother started to worry for the egg and was afraid that I was infected or even dead already. She tried her best to take care of the unfortunate egg and pay extra close attention to it. Not long after, when the eggs were just about ready to hatch, one of the two white eggs cracks and a little tyrannosaurus rex head pops out and starts to struggle with the rest of the shell.  Just moments after the second white eggs hatches too and both little t. rexes start to learn and develop into a fully-grown flesh-eating dinosaur. The mother was so joyful with her two new baby rexes that she completely forgot about the third black egg.

            As time went on the black egg still lay there motionless. The mother was starting to get worried that the egg will never hatch. After a while of watching mother rex show love to the egg the baby rexes started to be jealous and decided that they should destroy it so they can get more attention.  Early in the morning when the mother was sleeping the baby rexes slipped the egg from under her and rolled it out of nest only to see it fall onto a rock and crack open. They were finally happy after they got ride of the egg and were relieved until they saw what crawled out.  It was another baby rex that was back and unique. The other two didn’t like that he was not the same so they decided to try once more to get ride of it! They attacked it with aggressive moves but soon realized that they weren’t doing anything to it. The little dinosaur got scared so he let out a cry and to everyone’s surprise fire came out that scared away the attackers.  Mother rex finally woke up after the fight controlled the problem. She then names the baby rex; Dragon.

            The black dinosaur eventually learns to trust and grow with the other rexes until one day he notices wings growing on his back. He was frightened by them and was afraid that no one will accept him so he ran away in search of place to hide. After a long and difficult day of running away finally finds a very narrow tunnel that leads somewhere. As he crawls deeper and deeper the still developing dragon finds an empty cavity deep inside the tunnel and is big enough for the dragon the rest. The following morning Dragon wakes up and realizes his wings grew bigger and now he is not able to climb back out the tunnel he came from.  Ever since then the black Dragon has been trying to get out. He is stuck inside the cavity and desperately moves his body to try to free him self but it is just not strong enough. To this day the dinosaur is stuck and every time he moves he sends massive earthquakes that rattle the earth.  

Reader's Sketch

Vasiliy Grin

Thomas Maltman

Children’s Literature, Spring 2012

Reader’s Sketch

1/19/2012

The Reader’s Sketch

         My very first memory of a story is when my mom first read to my siblings and me. We were all sitting in my mom’s cozy bed listening to my moms soft voice as she read stories in Russian. The stories that we requested her to read were usually stories of miracles happening to people. We listened in silence to every single word that she said to make sure we don’t miss anything. It was good to hear these stories and enjoyed them every single night.

As a child I was lazy. I hated reading and avoided it as much as I could. I will always remember my mothers screeching voice yelling at me in Russian, “Vasia! Edi Chitaat!”  In English that translates to “Vasiliy! Go read!” I had all the books a child could ever need but I never took advantage of it and now I remember that with great regret.  When I lived in my old house in Blain Minnesota I had all my books in my basement, half on a large bookshelf and the other half scattered around on the floor. I don’t have much memories of me ever reading the books but I do have plenty of me throwing them around and stacking them so I could later knock them all down by throwing a ball at them with my brother or what ever friends where over. I always got in huge trouble for doing it. But that didn’t last very long because my mom said if I ever do anything with the books besides read them she would force me to read them all with her. There was no way in the world I would ever want to read that much so I never throw another ball at the books again.

            When I just started elementary school is when reading started to get more serious and I continued to hate it even more. For me reading was like a chore so I still tried my best to stay way from it. That was extremely hard for me to do at that age because that is when I got my first reading log that I had to follow from my school.  Strangely enough I was actually very motivated to keep up with it, well, maybe that’s because if I read the most out of my class I would get a magic yoyo as a reward. That magic yoyo was one of the first things that I truly would do anything for. I was first introduced to it when my teacher had a speaker come into class to speak about reading. Also he just happened to know how to do yoyo tricks witch amused everyone in the class, even the girls. When he showed the class his first trick, which was called Walk the Dog or something similar to that, that’s when I realized I needed to have that to show off to everyone and get the attention I always loved. To get that yoyo I had to read more minutes then anyone else in my class. Challenge accepted, I thought to my self. So that was a big problem at first because I hated reading and I was not about to read for a few hours a day. What I decided to do for the first day of the log was just completely lie about I just wrote in the times and had my mom sign it and she did. At the time my mother did not know how to read in English so she usually signed everything I handed to her. It worked out perfectly for the first few days until my day caught on, eventually he figured out what the whole log was about and started to monitor my reading. Although now my reading was watched over from a distance I still refused to read. I would sit on my basement couch with my blanket and look through all the books I had over and over again. I did not want to read anything; all I wanted to do is just look at the creative illustrations from page to page and from book to book. The books that amused me the most are the ones by Dr. Sues. The pictures where different from most books, they where so abstract and sparked my imagination. I remember starting at a single page for 10 minutes at a time analyzing it and looking for things I might have previously missed. That is my first memory enjoyable member of books. I never ended up getting that yoyo but I did learn an important lesson about working hard for something that I desired.

            As years went on I learned to finally enjoy books for what they are. I started to love to read through out middle school. My favorite book or book series while I was growing up was called Flight 29 Down by Walter Sorrells. It was a very exciting and mysterious series that I enjoyed to read. I was about a plane that crashed on an Island and the things the group did to survive. These books really shaped my reading future. They showed me that books could be interesting and fun. Although I did start to enjoy books I do not consider myself a life long reader because if I had free time to do something fun or exiting then reading would unfortunately be one of the last things on my list. I plan to continue reading for as long as I can because reading will always bring me enjoyment when I cant do other things. I hope I can start reading more often though so I can grow as a person.

Dark Novels

 After reading both of the articles, I realized that both have some unquestionable points that I would agree on. Out of the two articles the one that I would have to agree more with is the one by Meghan Gurdon. The reason why I agree with her argument over Sherman Alexei's is because darkness to the extent that it is in right now should not be something a child reads in his or her spare time for entertainment. Note that I did not say that it is not something a child should read for healing or to obtain "weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters." (Sherman Alexie) I cannot argue with that but what I could say is that reading these dark novels for entertainment can change a view point of the reader on crime and even spark some potentially dangerous behaviors. "Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code." (Meghan Gurdon) A child that is immersed in a dark novel can learn that some of these dark things are what life really is for many, but the truth is, it is not for most of us. Those who are fortunate enough to not have experienced the horrible things that are so vividly described in these books should not scar their own "happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart. Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it." (Meghan Gurdon) What they should do instead is read something that is entertaining as well as morally uplifting.