The Girl Who Helped Thunder

Retold by: James Bruchac and Joesph Bruchac

Illustrated by Stefano Vitale

Grade Level: 3-6

Genre: Traditional Literature

Have you ever questioned why some animals live so deep in the forest, the farthest they can be away from people? Or have you ever wondered why or where we got the saying that people get what they deserve? The collection of stories in “The Girl Who Helped Thunder” retold by James and Joseph Bruchac, includes many different folktales from different parts of the world. And also answers these simple questions, essentially helping us understand the importance and the deeper meaning of our morals that most of us live by today.

I stumbled upon this book “The Girl Who Helped Thunder” via the Education Resource Center in the library. This book features many different folk stories passed down through generations of tribes in many different areas of the world; such as the Great Plains or the Northwest for example. These stories resemble traditional literature since they can be defined as the ancient stories or poems that many different cultures use for or in a storytelling tradition. And also, in many of these folklore stories, many of the characters can have a specific trait and the stories are one to two pages long which makes them an easy read for a third or fourth grader and a conflict or resolution can be seen out early. Since the stories may come from different tribes, many of the stories may show differences in values due to the different perspectives of many storytellers in many different areas. Some of these stories have most likely been told and heard before, but many of them are new to me, which opens up a new light in many of the morals I or other readers may have.

In one of the folk stories that stood out to me, the moral of not being selfish is given out to readers. This one story is called Why Owl Lives Away from the People given by the Wiyot tribe. It reflects on a father owl who is the caregiver when it comes to searching and providing food for the family; but is questioned when he never seizes to bring back any food but is not becoming smaller in size compared to the rest of the family. One night however, the mother owl finds out what is causing this problem when she secretly stays awake to find out where he is really getting the food for himself. This story reflects selfishness, since this story comes from a culture where sharing is the matter of life and death, and being selfish is one of the worst things to do in these situations. And not only in these situations does this apply, many people in the society we live in today have selfishness as one of their negative traits. This story would help kids ease away from being selfish, so that as they grow up they do not depict a matter or harm simply by making a choice that they want alone without taking others opinions into consideration.

Overall, this book full of stories would be great for the group of children while in the grade levels of third until sixth where I would have it in my classroom library, and possibly even read aloud if there was an issue with understanding one of the morals in the story among classmates. And could potentially be used also when children are figuring out what there true personalities are. Although the stories are short and sweet, they still include many of the literacy elements such as characters, setting, and even a resolution. The illustrations however were not placed for every story, but when they were present, they tended to be very catchy in a way that not all of the animals or people were drawn out to be how we would expect them to look like in reality. The information given in these stories can be compared to the frameworks in a classroom such as coming to understand other perspectives and cultures, accessing the point of view of the text and how it shapes a story (6), or possibly even making connections from the story to the students life in general (MA 9.)