Native American Hero Tales - Reading Diary A

For week 10, I chose to read Thompson's Native American Hero Tales unit. In the first half of the unit, I read The Jealous Uncle, Bluejay and His Companions, Dug-From-Ground, and The Attack on the Giant Elk and the Great Eagle. I really enjoyed the story of the Jealous Uncle. This story is about an uncle who tries to kill all of his sister’s sons. He kills her first two sons, but he is told that the third son is a girl so that he will not kill him. This story has a lot of action, as the uncle eventually finds out that the child is a boy and tries to kill him. The boy is smart, though, and he lives through four different attempts at his life. In the uncle’s last attempt to kill him, he places the boy in a wooden box and sends him out to sea. The boy lives and is discovered by the great Eagle people. He lives there for a while before the chief of the village learns about his past. The chief gives the boy his wings and tells him to fly to his village and bring his parents back. The boy did fly to the village, where he took his revenge on his uncle and then proceeded to bring his parents back to the village with him. One thing that I really liked about this story was the character development. The author did a great job of giving the uncle a dark and evil personality, while the boy stayed optimistic throughout the story and always believed that he would survive his uncle’s plans to kill him.

(Drawing of a boy with wings. Source: deviantart.com)