English Language Arts Grade 7F Fractured Fairy Tales English Language Arts Grade 7F

What is a Fractured Fairy Tale? A fractured fairy tale is a story that takes traditional fairy tale characteristics or traditional fairy tale stories and changes them in unexpected ways. Often the affect is funny. Sometimes the story is told from the non-heroic character's point of view.

What is it…continued… Sometimes the story incorporates unexpected traits or motivations for well known characters. Sometimes a fractured fairy tale may simply jumble together parts of traditional fairy tales to create something an entirely new story.

Shrek The "Shrek" movies are popular films that can be considered fractured fairy tales. In the first film, Shrek mixes together fairy tale motifs to create a new and unique story. Shrek, the story's hero, is a green ogre. Because ogres are often the villains in fairy tales, this subverts the audiences' expectations. At the end of the movie, the beautiful princess turns into an ogre herself when she kisses Shrek, the tale's hero and her true love. This also subverts traditional fairy tales, like "The Frog Prince" or "Beauty and the Beast," in which true love's kiss turns an ugly character into a beautiful one.

Sleeping Ugly "Sleeping Ugly," a book by Jane Yolen, fractures the story of "Sleeping Beauty." In this story, two female characters, one beautiful but mean princess named Miserella and one kind but ugly peasant named Jane, are put under a sleeping spell. Enchanted by Miserella's beauty, a prince decides to break the spell by kissing her. But he wants to practice kissing beforehand to be sure he gets it right so he kissed Jane first, waking her instead.

The Stinky Cheese Man "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales," a well-loved children's book written by John Sciezka and illustrated by Lane Smith, fractures a number of children's fairy tales, putting into question the lessons to be learned from the like of Mother Goose. In their version of the "Ugly Duckling," the duckling, instead of growing up to be a beautiful swan, grows up to be an ugly goose. Fairy tales also mingle in this book breaking down the barriers between stories and also the barriers between the stories in the book and the physical book itself.

YOUR fairy tale should have… A beginning – most fairy tales start with “Once upon a time…” A problem – the main character should have to solve a problem in the story A solution – most fairy tales end with “And they lived happily ever after”, or they have a moral or lesson that is learned by the end of the story

References “Fractured Fairy Tale Stories | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/info_8488700_fractured-fairy-tale-stories.html#ixzz1ft7dz0mB