Fairy Tales in Different Cultures: Beauty and the Beast

I know I have not been sharing my Monday Fairy Tales in Different Cultures. I was taking a little break since the truth is I was getting a little sick of Cinderella tales. However I discovered a wonderful version of Beauty and the Beast retold by H. Chuku Lee. The story is pretty much the classical story, however the pictures are beautiful! The illustrations are done with a West Africa influence. The illustrator is Pat Cummings.

The pictures like I said are amazing and it is nice to see a classic story set in a different place. I love that it is a multicultural book. Like in the classic story, Beauty is the youngest daughter and asks her father to bring her back a rose unlike her older sisters who have long wish lists. The father runs into trouble and then is out during a storm. He founds a palace to stay in with invisible staff. As he is leaving the next morning he notices the flower garden and picks a rose for Beauty. The Beast appears and threatens to kill him. He asks to say goodbye to his family before he is killed. The Beast allows this. Beauty insists on returning with her father since it was her rose that caused the problem. The Beast is willing to allow her father to live if Beauty stays in his palace. Beauty agrees to keep her father alive. Over time Beauty becomes to enjoy her dinners with the Beast. The Beast asks her several times to marry him and she always answers no. His servants give her anything she wants from beautiful dresses and jewels to basically whatever she desires as long as she stays. The Beast gives her a magic mirror that she can see what is happening at her home from the castle. One day she sees that her father is sick and she begs the Beast to let her go and see her father. He agrees as long as she returns in seven days. She promises. However while home with her sisters she decides to stay longer then worries that the Beast may be dying since he said this would happen if she did not return. She goes back to the castle and dresses for dinner, but the Beast does not show up for dinner. She runs to the garden to find him collapsed and dying. She tells him he has to live so she can marry him. With that declaration of love, the Beast turns into a handsome prince. Beauty and the Beast are married and her entire family moves into the palace.

The introduction to the book says Beauty and the Beast was first told in 1740 by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot Gallon de Villeneuve.

Sharing Saturday 14-14

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week!! As always there were so many inspiring ideas! I love getting to look at them all, and I hope you have had a chance to check them all out. For today's features I have two categories. The first is a few of the science posts and the second is the rest of my features.

Science Features

1) From Life with Moore Babies: Spring Into Learning Science
2) From  Little Bins for Little Hands: Plastic Easter Egg Races: Exploring Ramps Angles
3) From JDaniel4's Mom: Cool Science Experiment: Making Spider Eggs
4) From Gift of Curiosity: Exploring Glitter Putty

Other Features

1) From the 11 year-old daughter of Blu Lace UK: Her own creation of a scarf (her mother sent me a picture to share with you)
2) From Winegums and Watermelons: How to Make a Rainbow Pinwheel
3) From Life Lesson Plans: Art History Eggs
4) From Bible Fun for Kids: Preschool Alphabet: D is for Disciples of Jesus
5) From A Bountiful Love: Letter of the Week: Dd
6) From Tot Schooling: Egg Carton Recycled Easter Crafts

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

Featured Button Code:

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From Your Hostess: This week was a busy week as usual and we have my nephew visiting from North Carolina. However we had time to share Easter in Guatemala (come see the sawdust carpets and stay tuned for more countries), April Happenings with our finished sparkling Easter eggs, my first ever guest post -- Autism Awareness -- a must read for everyone, Multicultural Easter Book Round-up and Link Party (help me create a wonderful list of multicultural Easter books).

Now for This Week's Party  
A Few Simple Guidelines:
1)  Please follow Crafty Moms Share via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  

2)  Link any kid-friendly, child-centered post. Please no etsy shops or giveaways, etc.  Remember to link to your actual post. 

3) Post the Sharing Saturday button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.

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4) I would love it if you would follow me on Facebook,  Google+, and Pinterest 

5) If you do not have a blog, but want to share an idea you can leave it in the comments or e-mail it to me with a picture (if possible).

 

 Disclaimer: By sharing here, you are giving Crafty Moms Share permission to use your photos for features and to pin your craft at Pinterest.

Multicultural Easter Books

So with Easter a few weeks away, I thought I would look at some multicultural Easter books. I discovered these are not all that easy to find. Unlike the Christmas books, which I found many multicultural books and divided by race, I only found a few Easter books. As a result I have three new categories: Multicultural Easter books (books with at least one non-Caucasian character), Easter around the world and cultural Easter books. Most of these books I found at our local library network (though some I have not gotten yet and others we have not read yet).

Multicultural Easter Books

1) Celebrations in My World: Easter by Lynn Peppas
2) Emma's Easter by Lisa Bullard
3) Bunny Days by Michael Scott
4) Easter by Miriam Nerlove
5) Let's Celebrate Jesus on Easter by Amy Beveridge
6) Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco
7) Our Easter Book by Jane Belk Moncure
8) Easter Sparkling Surprise by Elizabeth Spurr
9) Painted Eggs and Chocolate Bunnies by Toni Trent Parker
10) Miz Fannie Mae's Fine New Easter Hat by Melissa Milich

Easter Around the World

1) A World of Holidays Easter by Catherine Chambers
2) Celebrations in My World: Easter by Lynn Peppas
3) Easter Eggs for Everyone by Evelyn Coskey
4) Easter Around the World by Shannon Knudsen
5) Easter Traditions Around the World by M.J. Cosson
6) Easter by Cass R. Sandak

Cultural Easter Books 

(Note: There are also many books about countries that include a bit about Easter celebrations.)

1) Piccolina and the Easter Bells by Pauline Priolo
2) The Birds' Gift: A Ukrainian Easter Story retold by Eric A. Kimmel
3) Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco
4) Tekla's Easter by Lillian Budd
5) Swedish Toys, Dolls and Gifts You can Make Yourself  by Ulf Lofgren
6) Eggs Beautiful: How to Make Ukrainian Easter Eggs by Johanna Luciow
7) The Magic Babushka by Phyllis Limbacher Tildes

Have you discovered any more multicultural Easter Books? Please link up the title and author of any I missed here!!


More Easter and Multicultural Things to check out:

• My Easter Craft Round-Up
• Easter in Guatemala
• Multicultural Children's Book Day--Rainbow Stew
• Multicultural Children's Book Day--Julie the Black Belt Series
• My Easter Pinterest Board
• My Multicultural Resource Pinterest Board

Autism Awareness--Guest Blogger

Today I am going to do something I never do! I am having a guest blogger! My good friend is going to talk to you about her own experience of discovering and coping with her son's autism. My friend's son often plays differently than other children his age.  One of the unique things he does involves lining items or toys up, something that is common in children with Autism.  The pictures below depict some of his "creations" that my friend has randomly stumbled upon throughout the house. Now my friend is an wonderful mother and person and I am always so amazed with how she deals with what life has thrown her way and she does it with grace and style. So without further ado, here is my first guest blogger post. 

April Happenings

For April Fools Day, Hazel's school had mismatch day. The principal sent out notices to the families that it would be a day where kids required to wear uniforms, wouldn't need to and all the kids so try to dress mismatched. Hazel loved the idea. To complete the look she wore different shoes as well.

April brings Easter!! We will be focusing on Easter and spring crafts as well as doing some posts on Easter around the world and multicultural Easter books. Yesterday we shared our first Easter Around the World post with the sawdust carpets of Guatemala. We also have done an Easter craft round-up here. 

You may remember a few weeks ago we shared some spring crafts from Oriental Trading. One of the crafts was Sparkly Easter Eggs. I finished making all but one of the eggs. I decided to only make one of each how the craft was meant to be done and got creative on the rest. Hazel will be making the last one and I'm leaving it up to her how she wants to do it. I made hearts, crosses, horizontal stripes, spots, and spirals. Then I hung them all in the plant/tree we have in our entry.

Tomorrow is Light It Up Blue for Autism Awareness. I have a good friend whose oldest son recently was diagnosed on the autism spectrum. She happens to be an occupational therapist whose past job (before becoming a stay-at-home mom) was working in an elementary school with autistic (and other disabled) children. She has been asked to start a blog of her own by Autism Speaks. She is in the process of doing it, but first she is going to be my one and only guest poster to help all of us become more aware of autism. I usually do not allow anyone else to guest post here, but I think her insight and information will be invaluable to us all and I trust her completely to post responsibly, so join us tomorrow for lighting it up blue!!

We also have our regular monthly events like Virtual Book Club for Kids and Around the World in 12 Dishes.

April's author for Virtual Book Club for Kids is Denise Fleming! Denise Fleming does the art and words for her books with some help from her artist husband. In her own words: 

"My books do not have many words, but I start with hundreds of words—writing and rewriting until I have just the right words to tell the story.(I love strong words, action words, words that convey movement and sound. And I love rhyme.)" Denise Fleming (Source)

 So much of her work is the art in the books. They are fun and beautiful!! Have you enjoyed any of her books yet? I hope you will join us April 14th to see what we do with her books!

For Around the World in 12 Dishes we will be exploring Portugal! I hope you join us April 21st to see what exciting foods everyone makes from Portugal and learn a bit about this wonderful country. I will be writing an introduction to the country for the Around the World in 12 Dishes blog.

That gives you an idea of what we have coming up this month!! I hope you will join us!!