Westfield Washington Public Library American

Tall Tales Story Lab— Week #5 June 30, 2020 INSIDE THIS ISSUE: WELCOME! Learn 2 exaggerated beyond belief. Some- 3 What is a Tall Tale? Read times the hero is based on a real Make 4 Tall tales were first told at the begin- person and they usually have a regu- Did You Know? 4 ning of American history when peo- lar job like lumberjack, firefighter, Solve 5 ple were moving across the country sailor, or railway worker. and taming the wilderness. In those Explore 6 days, before people had the types of How Were Tall Tales Spread? Write 6 entertainment we enjoy today—no Tall tales were spread by word of movies or television and many peo- mouth, usually through bragging con- ple couldn’t read—they depended on tests. Often times the narrator him- storytelling for entertainment. After self knew he was telling a tall tale but a long day of hard work on the ranch he was doing so to fool the city folk or at a logging camp, people gath- who he referred to as “greenhorns” ered together and told each other funny tales filled with exaggerations. for being so naïve. These tales helped people face the Story Lab Schedule difficult, dangerous, and sometimes overwhelming task of living on the  06/02—Egyptian Mythology frontier. Don’t forget to sign up for the  06/09—Roman & Greek The heroes of these stories are usu- Summer Reading Program! Mythology ally larger-than-life and details are wwpl.beanstack.org  06/16—Medieval Legends  06/23—Age of Enlightenment WATCH Fairy Tales

 06/30—American Tall Tales We can’t fit the hundreds of years of information about American Tall Tales  07/07—Stories from Africa into this document so we created a supplemental playlist on our YouTube  07/14—Stories from Asia channel called SRP 2020: Story Lab Week #5—American Tall Tales, which you can  07/21—Stories from South America find here— https://www.youtube.com/user/  07/28—Stories from WWPL46074/playlists the Middle East *Please note that this playlist is housed on regular YouTube and parents are encouraged to monitor their child’s activity in the event that any questions arise while watching. LEARN

There are a lot of interesting Alfred Bulltop Stormalong was tall tales about characters a seafaring giant invented by story- throughout American history. tellers who told tales about his frontiersman and who later became Check out a few of them nautical adventures. Stories agree a member of the United States below: that Stormalong came from an Congress. He died fighting against American town somewhere along Mexican soldiers at the Alamo in The fictional Pecos Bill was a the Atlantic coast. He didn’t stay Texas. Legends and tall tales about legendary cowboy who grew up in anywhere very long because he Davy Crockett came from a series Texas. His parents lost him out of outgrew every town, house, and of Crockett Almanacs that were their covered wagon near the ship there was. Eventually, he built written between 1838 and 1856. Pecos River. He was raised by a his own oversized ship. It was so Storytellers have added to pack of wolves and didn’t know he big that he had to hinge the mast Crockett’s impossible feats in the was human until he was a teenager. tips so he could pull them down to almanacs, and their legends about He is said to have been strong let the moon pass. He had a lifelong Crockett grow bigger each time enough, brave enough, and smart rivalry with a Kraken, a huge, squid they’re told. enough to rope a tornado and take -like sea monster. care of all the cattle in Texas. The legendary John Henry is said to have worked as a "steel-driving man"—a man tasked with hammer- ing a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel. In songs and stories, John Henry died after out-drilling a steam drill. Some of the tales about John Henry could have come from events in a real person’s life, or from feats performed by many different people.

The real-life model for Mose the Firefighter was Moses Paul Bunyan is a fictional giant Humphries, a printer for a newspa- who invented logging and all the per and a fireman during the early tools to go with it. According to 1800s. The tall tales about Mose, a the tall tales that exist about him, city folk hero, grew from a series Paul created both the Puget Sound of New York plays about a rough- in the northwest and the Grand talking, kindhearted firefighter who Canyon in the southwest. Legend was said to be 8 feet tall and had has it that, to provide drinking wa- hands as big as Virginia hams. On ter for his giant blue ox, Babe, Bun- stage he rescued ladies in distress yan scooped out the Great Lakes! and saved babies using his huge There were claims that Paul’s camp stovepipe hat. People claimed he stove covers an acre, and his David (Davy) Crockett was a was able to lift trolley cars over his hotcake griddle is so large that it real person, born in 1786 in head and swim across the Hudson is greased by men using sides of Tennessee. He was a hunter and a River with two strokes. bacon for skates. Page 2 AMERICAN TALL TALES STORY LAB —WEEK #5 Page 3 READ

Early Chapter Fiction Books  American Tall Tales Series (4 books) by M. J. York  Physical books—Evergreen  eBooks—Hoopla  Far Out Folktales Series (4 books) by Various Authors  Physical books—Evergreen

 eBooks—Libby  The Tumbleweed Came Back Fiction Books by Carmela LaVigna Coyle  American Legends & Folktales Series  Physical book—Evergreen (16 books) by Various Authors Non-Fiction Books  Gullible Gus by Maxine Schur  Physical books—Evergreen Pro Tip: Tall Tales live in the same section as fairy tales which is j398.2!  Physical book—Evergreen  The Misadventured Summer Of Tumbleweed Thompson by Glenn McCarty  American Tall Tales by Mary Pope Osborne  eBook—Hoopla  Physical book—Evergreen  Outlaws of Time Series (3 books) by Nathan D. Wilson  eBook—Libby  Physical books—Evergreen  Cut From the Same Cloth: American Women of Myth, Legend, and Tall  eBooks—Hoopla Tale by Robert San Souci  Paul Bunyan vs. Hals Halson : the  Physical book—Evergreen giant lumberjack challenge! by Teresa Bateman  Stormalong by Eric Metaxas  Physical book—Evergreen  Physical book—Evergreen  Write Your Own Tall Tale by Natalie Rosinsky  Physical book—Evergreen  Johnny Appleseed: a poem by Reeve Lindbergh  Physical book—Evergreen

 eAudio—Libby MAKE

Thought to be the basis of the fable of actually popular in America in the 1960s. Johnny Appleseed, the exploits of Nova, Such small, ordinary things, yet when Ohio, native John Chapman revolve they are strung together, they become around acres of apple orchards. Rather something more substantial. than share them with others, Chapman took his delectable fruit and turned it 1. Rinse apple seeds after removing into a popular libation: hard apple cider. from apple. He had plenty of apples to keep his sup- ply of cider high, which benefited the 2. Use a needle to string on a settlers that became his frequent custom- thread while they're still damp. ers. That makes poking the hole

According to Howard Means, author of much easier. “Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, 3. Hang the thread with needle up the American Story,” cider was a big part somewhere safe so they can dry of frontier life. The drink was a staple that accompanied most meals, which 4. Keep adding to your string as provided Chapman the demand to be- you eat more apples. come a veritable Johnny Appleseed. 5. When they're dried and you Do you know what you have left over have enough for your project, once you turn acres of apples into cider remove from storage string and or applesauce? Seeds! Lots and lots of add to new string in interesting seeds. Did you know that you can use the seeds from apples to make jewelry? designs. Making jewelry from apple seeds was DID YOU KNOW?

In the early 1900s, it was popular in America to send tall tale postcards. The pictures on these cards had been changed using photo distortion, such as enlarging part of a picture without enlarging the rest of it. Some of these results were huge fruits and vegetables that were too large to fit in a wagon; giant fish that could fill a railroad flatcar; and gigantic rabbits that appeared with saddles on them. These rabbits looked in the pictures like they could be ridden as if they were horses. These cards made people laugh and were quite popular in the Great Plains states.

Page 4 AMERICAN TALL TALES SOLVE

Page 5 AMERICAN TALL TALES EXPLORE

If you’ve ever been to Muncie, Indiana, you may have seen one of America’s most famous characters— Paul Bunyan!

The 25 foot tall Paul Bunyan statue, 333 West Hoover Street now located outside of the Timbers Lounge dates from the mid-1960s, Westfield, IN 46074 when it was created to advertise Phone: 317-896-9391 Kirby Wood Lumber Co. E-mail: [email protected] He’s not the only statue of Bunyan around the United States. You could see one in any of the following WESTFIELD WASHINGTON locations: PUBLIC LIBRARY  Klamath, California  Cheshire, Connecticut Fostering exploration, discovery and growth!  Portland, Oregon  Bangor, Maine | Rumford, Maine

Follow us on social  Akeley, Minnesota | Bemidji, Minnesota | Brainerd, Minnesota media @WWPL46074  Manistique, Michigan | Ossineke, Michigan  Lakewood, Wisconsin | Eau Claire, Wisonsin WRITE Try writing your own tall tale—a humorous story in which realistic details have been exaggerated to the point of being unbelievable.  Main Character Next Week  Name: Be on the look out for next week’s Story Lab edition which will be  Realistic job available on Tuesday, July 7, 2020.  Other super-human traits:  Setting We’ll be focusing on  Time period: Stories from  Location: Africa  Plot  Sequence of events / adventure, discovery of problem:  Conclusion / funny way problem is solved:

You can pick a little-known character from history or create a new one. Don’t forget the exaggerated details! Instead of saying, “He hit the ball over the fence” you can say “he hit the ball so hard that it flew over the fence, through the atmosphere, around the moon, and was never seen again!”