Activities for a Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlaJHBynu18 (30 second Trailer of the book)

Activity 1 Fairy Tales or Traditional Tales, regardless of where in the world they originate from, quite often have similar themes, plots and characters. Your task is to take some or all of the characteristics identified below, or even identify some of your own, and write your own Fairy Tale. • Hero/Heroine is an orphan

• 3 tasks to be completed (the number 3 is very powerful in Fairy Tales)

• Meets a wicked witch that they must outsmart

• Acts of kindness are often rewarded

• Has a wicked stepmother • Can be very gruesome and gory

• Talking animals/trees and the use of anthropomorphism. (Why not use a dictionary to look this word up if you don’t know it?)

• There is a moral to the story or a lesson to be learned, often a cautionary tale.

Activity 2

Choose your favorite fairy tale from the book and create a cartoon strip of the tale. Think about how you can shorten the tale and still get the message across to the reader.

Activity 3

• Go to this website: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/

• Pick a story that you know well. For example, Little Red Cap, Rumpelstiltskin,

Little Snow White, Cinderella, etc. See how the Brothers Grimm version is

different from the Disney/Hans Christian Andersen’s version. Which did you like better? Why?

Discussion Questions:

• What do you think of the narrator of “A Tale Dark and Grimm”? Why? Would the story be the same without him? • Why do you think the author chose to put “The End” throughout the stories? How do these “ends” influence how you read the stories? How would the stories be different without them? • On page 8, Faithful Johannes defines “under-stand.” Explain his definition. Who in your life is someone you under-stand and who under-stands you? As part of under-standing, what do you do for each other and why? • In “Brother and Sister” Hansel continues to hunt animals even though he knows doing so is wrong. Why does he continue? In the past, what have you or your friends done that you knew was wrong when you were doing it? Why did you continue? What was the result and how do you feel about it? • Faithful Johannes comes to believe that: “Nothing is as precious as children. Nothing” (page 153). What does he mean by this? Do you agree or disagree? Why? • What might the ravens represent? Using examples from the story, explain why you think so. What do you like about the ravens’ role in the story and why? • What in A Tale Dark & Grimm made you laugh? Do you usually enjoy humorous stories? Why or why not? • The worlds in fairy tales are very different from those most people live in today. So, why do people still enjoy reading them? Why might fairy tales still be important to people’s lives?