Tricksters. Folktales on Stage

To finish up this week of trickster mouse-deer stories, I wanted to finish up with some mouse-deer theater, both theater for Western schoolchildren and traditional Javanese puppet theater. 

First, the book for schoolchildren: Folktales on Stage: Children's Plays for Reader's Theater by Aaron Shepard. 

This is a really outstanding book (it was a big part of my inspiration to start writing my own readers theater scripts based on folktales), and the mouse-deer is a special favorite of Aaron Shephard; the play "The Adventures of Mouse Deer" is the first play in the book!

As you can see, Shepard has even written a little song for the mouse-deer to sing. In this play, Shephard has combined a series of mouse-deer adventures: Mouse-Deer and Tiger, Mouse-Deer and Crocodile, and Mouse-Deer and the Farmer.

I was especially excited to see a children's theater script about the mouse-deer because the mouse-deer Kanchil is very much a part of the theatrical tradition in Java, specifically the "wayang" or puppet-theater tradition. You can read more about wayang at Wikipedia, and here's a video recording of Kanchil Wayang, the Mouse-Deer Puppet Theater, that you can watch online. There are even English subtitles! Wayang Kancil [Mousedeer Wayang].

So, that wraps up a week of mouse-deer, and it was exciting to find so many mouse-deer resources at the Internet Archive; I found so many mouse-deer books, in fact, that I'll be sure to do another week of mouse-deer later on. I'll have another trickster to tell you about starting tomorrow... but for now, enjoy the mouse-deer!

Folktales on Stage:
Children's Plays for Reader's Theater

by Aaron Shepard

Tricksters. Far East Stories for Pleasure Reading

A different kind of children's book today, not so lovingly and lavishly illustrated as the mouse-deer books from yesterday; instead, this is one of those vocabulary-controlled Dolch readers: Far East Stories for Pleasure Reading by Edward and Marguerite Dolch.

I've written about the Dolch reading system before (see post: Once There Was a Coyote), and I am honestly a fan. I wish that they had provided some notes for the stories to help put them in context along with some bibliography, but the books do not contain notes or references. Still, they really are a pleasure to read, and are especially good not just for young readers but also for English-language-learners of any age. I hope to learn how to write my own Dolch-style stories with limited vocabulary. That's not something I have ever tried to do, but it is a writing challenge that I think I would enjoy!

The book contains stories from China, Tibet, Korea, Japan, India, and indonesia, and of the 3 stories from Indonesia, there is one story about the trickster mouse-deer who is called Kantchil here. This is the same story of Kantchil in the pit that you can find in The Sacred Banana Leaf book that I wrote about yesterday, and it is also the title story of Courlander's Kantchil's Lime Pit and Other Stories From Indonesia (I'm 99% certain that Courlander's book was the source used by the Dolches). Whatever the source, it really is a perfect little trickster story, so I am glad to find it in so many different versions. I like how Dolch's version ends here: "And he ran away laughing." That is the ending for literally thousands of trickster stories around the world, including this wonderful little story about the mouse-deer of Indonesia.

The illustrations are by Beulah Jackson, who illustrated several of these Dolch readers. You have to look hard to see the mouse-deer; he's trapped down in the pit with the other animals by this point in the story:

So, since we have these other versions of the story to compare, you can get a sense of what the Dolch easy-reading approach is like. I am a fan, and I was excited to see that there is a Dolch mouse-deer story to include this week... and you'll find some other trickster stories in this book too of course, like the famous story of the tiger, the brahmin, and the jackal. 

Long live pleasure reading!

Far East Stories for Pleasure Reading

by Edward and Marguerite Dolch

Tricksters. Indonesian Trickster Tales.

For today's mouse-deer trickster tales, I've got three children's books by Nathan Kumar Scott. First up is The Sacred Banana Leaf: An Indonesian Trickster Tale.

The art is by Radhashyam Raut in the Patachitra style of Orissa (the book was published in India), and it's a beautiful accompaniment to this ingenious story where Kanchil gets himself into trouble and then uses his powers of imagination and persuasion to secure his rescue. In addition to Kanchil, you get to meet Ular the snake, Babi the wild boar, and Harimau the tiger. 

The book also includes a variation on the Indian card game ganjifa to play using the artwork from the book.

Next up is Mangoes and Bananas: An Indonesian Trickster Tale, which is about Kanchil and his friend Monyet, the monkey. 

The mouse-deer and the monkey decide to grow their own mangoes and bananas, and once again Kanchil uses his powers of speech to get the monkey to do what he wants. The art is by T. Balaji, using the Kalamkari style of art from southeastern India:

Amd finally, The Great Race: An Indonesian Trickster Tale.

In this story you meet Gajah the elephant, Kerbau the buffalo, Buwaya the crocodile, and most important of all: Pelan the snail. The art is by Jagdish Chitara in the Waghari (Vaghari) style, and you get to see the trickster mouse-deer out-tricked in this one:

As always, these lovely books are just a cick away at the Internet Archive! And I'll be back tomorrow with more mouse-deer adventures.

The Sacred Banana Leaf:

An Indonesian Trickster Tale

by Nathan Kumar Scott

Mangoes and Bananas:

An Indonesian Trickster Tale

by Nathan Kumar Scott

The Great Race:

An Indonesian Trickster Tale

by Nathan Kumar Scott

Tricksters. Fables and Folktales from an Eastern Forest

Carrying on with this week of trickster mouse-deer stories from southeast Asia, today's book is a wonderful collection of stories from Malaysia: Fables and Folktales from an Eastern Forest by Walter William Skeat.

Yes, that is a little mouse-deer right there on the cover of the book! And you can find out more about the life and work of anthropologist Walter Skeat at Wikipedia.

The illustrations are by F. H. Townsend; just look at the little mouse-deer beaching a shark!

Many but not all of the stories feature the adventures of the mouse-deer, and as always you can use the search feature at the Archive to zoom right in on the mentions of mouse-deer:

For me, these stories are especially exciting because they embody the beautiful blend of storytelling cultures in Malaysia. For example, you can see the mouse-deer taking the place of other tricksters in traditional stories from India (replacing the rabbit, replacing the jackal), and you will also find characters from Islamic folklore here, like King Solomon.

So, read and enjoy... and I'll be back with more stories about mouse-deer tomorrow.

Fables and Folktales from an Eastern Forest

by Walter William Skeat

Tricksters. Kantchil's Lime Pit

Yesterday I introduced the tiny mouse-deer trickster who is the focus for this week, and today I get to feature a book of stories by one of my favorite folklorists, Harold Courlander. As you can see, the mouse-deer Kantchil features in the title of this story collection: Kantchil's Lime Pit and Other Stories From Indonesia.

The illustrations are by Robert Kane; here you can see Kantchil with his enemies, the crocodiles:

There are several Kantchil stories in the book and, as always at the Internet Archive, you can use the handy book-search feature to find all references to Kantchil in the text:

As Courlander explains in the notes in the back of the book, he collected these stories from storytellers in Sumatra, Java, Celebes, and Lombok. The notes also provide information about other Kantchil stories which are not included in the book. If you are familiar with Courlander's other folktale books, you know he does a great job with those notes in the back. There is also a glossary and pronunciation guide in the back as well.

I'll be back with more mouse-deer stories tomorrow and, of course, if you want to read of Courlander,  you will find MANY of his books at the Archive: books by Harold Courlander at the Internet Archive. For example, Robert Kane did the illustrations also for this book of stories from Ethiopia and Eritrea that Courlander wrote together with Wolf Leslau: The Fire on the Mountain, and Other Stories from Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Just IMO, you can never go wrong with a book by Harold Courlander. Enjoy!

Kantchil's Lime Pit
and Other Stories From Indonesia
by Harold Courlander

Tricksters. How the Mouse Deer Became King

Last week was all about the tiny antelope trickster of western and central Africa, the "royal antelope" or Neotragus pygmaeus. This week, I will be writing about the tiny hooved trickster of southeast Asia, a chevrotain, also called "mouse-deer" (which I think is actually a useful way to refer to the African royal antelope also, since "mouse" rather than "royal" gives the right impression; that's how I decided to refer to the African trickster in my Tiny Tales).

The mouse-deer of Java is about the size of a rabbit, weighing just around 4 pounds. You can find out more at Wikipedia, which is the source of this photo. 

You can see the close resemblance to his African cousin!

In the folktales of Indonesia and Malaysia, this tiny trickster often goes by the name of Kanchil (spelled variously in English: Kancil, Kantjil, Kantchil, etc.). Another Malay name for the mouse-deer is "pelanduk" and the classic collection of mouse-deer stories is called the "Hikayat Pelanduk Jinaka" (various transliterations in to English), dating back in written form to 17th-century Malay manuscripts.

There are lots of great mouse-deer resources at the Internet Archive, so I'll have a full week this week, and another week of mouse-deer stories later on sometime too! To get started, I want to feature this beautiful book by Margueritte Harmon Bro: How the Mouse Deer Became King.

Bro [1894-1977] was a missionary in China who also traveled throughout southeast Asia; you can read more about her life and career at Wikipedia. In addition to the stories, this book has a helpful introduction about the enormous cultural importance of this tiny trickster. Here's what Bro says at the end (emphasis mine):

The tales recorded in this book have been gathered from various islands, sometimes taken down as they were heard, sometimnes found in children's school books, sometimes brought in by friends who had read them in Arabic. If one wanted to know all the other escapades and achievements of Kantjil, one would need to visit all of Indonesia's twenty thousand islands and multiply each island by twenty thousand pranks, which probably makes Kantjil the most famous hero of animal tales in the world — if only more people had heard of him.

I hope this week's books and blog posts can help spread the word so that more people will hear of this marvelous trickster character.

The illustrations for Bro's book are by Joseph Low, and they can help in imagining this distinctively tiny trickster. For example, here is Kantjil riding the elephant:

I'll be back each day this week with more of the mouse-deer's adventures, but I was so glad to find this book at the Internet Archive; it's a perfect place to begin!

How the Mouse Deer Became King

by Margueritte Harmon Bro