A Story about a Story
Twenty-some years ago, one of our children literature authors wrote a story meant to present the structure of the calendar in a manner close to our traditional tales.
In this story, the year was a king desperately trying to have a son and heir for his crown. For this, he successively married four women: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, but, unfortunately, each of them only gave birth to 3 daughters: the months.
The writer went to a publishing house, but they rejected the story because it was about a king and, on top of all, according to the civil law, only tree successive marriages were legal in that time. So, it was not politically correct.
After 1989, she tried to have it published again. This time, she was asked to make it more modern, by adding mentions of the most important events in our recent history for each month, including the Revolution. She did that, had the new version published, but she still was not happy.
After a while, she had a proposal for having it published in Japan. Under new conditions: only two seasons, to match the climate, and allusions to Japanese traditional stories. She made the changes, delivered the new version and never heard of it.
She still hopes to have her original version published: the one she wrote thinking of our old tales.
I saw this as a symbol or a symptom. In this cold world (and I'm not referring to the minus 15 degrees we had an hour ago), anything and anyone can be used somehow-even a story for small kids. And by all means, don't tell me it's normal!
3 comments:
Has she got the story back from Japan? They miught be using it as original. And this is illegal!
This is why I have proposed a new title for our school future Comenius. I remembered, all of a sudden, that one of your projects was Traditions across Europe. So, having something similar for the legends was not fair.
Although the contents and the work won't be the same, the similarity in the title could remind of a plagiarism.
She has never heard of the story ever after. Might as well have been published.
Yes, I took part in a project with this name. Our Italian partner won the MEDEA award for it.
What will be the title of your Comenius? Good luck with it!
I'm trying to find internal partners (we have the external ones)for a KA3 project that I'd REALLY love to have, about kids teaching basic ICT to elderly folks from old people homes. It's a beautiful idea, I'm crazy about it, but it's very hard to start. I might fail. :(
By the way, have you seen how many etwinnings on tourist guides have appeared? Take it as a compliment!
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