Week 2 Story: The Sleepy Koala
There once was a sleepy koala who spent most of his time in eucalyptus trees. One day when he was eating some eucalyptus leaves he came across a branch that did not look like the others. He asked "what shall I do with this odd branch?" He thought maybe he should try to eat it, although it didn't look very tasty. He thought another time to throw it down into the river where it could float away and bother a different creature. To his surprise the branch once answered back. It said "if you, sleepy koala, want me out of your sight just bury me under some dirt where the sun shines and I will never bother you in this form again." The koala was hesitant. It would require a lot of work for him to leave his tree to bury this branch. He was very busy with his 22 hours of sleep and 2 hours of eating leaves. Nonetheless he decided it was important to get rid of the strange branch once and for all. He climbed down his tree and followed the branch's instructions. After the branch had been buried the koala was so exhausted he climbed back into his tree and fell asleep immediately.
As time passed the koala thought he had done great work, ridding the world of the strange branch forever. Over time he forgot all about the branch but the branch was always there, growing every day, becoming a very important part of the ecosystem and the koala was none the wiser to how his precious eucalyptus trees grew. When the branch became a fully grown eucalyptus tree the sleepy koala made his way over to it. He thought to himself "wow this is a wonderful tree, so comfortable to sleep in and such delicious leaves to munch on." The tree remembered its time as a branch and how the koala thought of it. It thought to maybe seek revenge on the koala for judging it strange appearance but decided that even if the koala didn't know the true outcome of his actions, he did participate in the new growth of a wonderful eucalyptus tree.
Authors Note
I focused my story around the "Two Turtle Jatakas" but only the first one about the clever turtle. I didn't really like and completely understand the second so I just wrote using the first. I used a koala because I have a cute stuffed koala sitting on my counter but it was difficult to think of something for the koala to go against. The beginning of the story was actually pretty easy to get going but I had some issues trying to end it. I wanted to keep going with my own ideas, not wanting to follow how the original Jataka had ended. I think I ended up combining basic retelling and adding my own twist, hopefully it worked out and made a decent story.
Bibliography
"Jataka Tales" by Ellen C. Babbitt Link
Image Above: Cute koala eating a eucalyptus leaf. Image Link
Mariah,
ReplyDeleteI loved this story! Koalas are my absolute favorite animals and couldn't help, but stop to read it when I was exploring your blog! You are very creative! You're story sounded just like all of the other mini stories we had read in Week 2. It touched base on a lot of important subjects such as judging and grudges. Thanks for sharing!
Hey Mariah,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your spin off of the "Two Turtle Jatakas". I laughed when you said, "he was very busy with his 22 hours of sleep and 2 hours of eating leaves". That is something I wish I could do. I really liked the message that you portrayed in your story. I felt like the message was no good deed goes unnoticed. You had a good ending to your story even though you mentioned you had issues on ending it. I felt that the story came to a full circle.
Your classmate,
Joanna Yoon
How interesting! You chose to diverge pretty heavily from the source material, yet I can still see the places you were inspired by it. I did enjoy this story a lot, though. I like how, though you changed the story a lot, the theme of discarding something seemingly unsightly only to help it in the end carried through in both of the stories. Is that really how eucalyptus trees are spread, by koalas discarding branches? If so I've learned something new today!
ReplyDeleteHi Mariah,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the koala's lazy, reluctant attitude, the way he dislikes the branch but is simultaneously too uninterested to fight with it. I also liked the use of italics for the branch's dialogue. It really sets it off from normal dialogue and gives a formatting clue that perhaps the branch isn't so much speaking as thinking, or something else entirely.
I wonder if this symbiotic relationship between lazy koalas and eucalyptus trees is how all such trees are planted -- the story certainly seems to imply it.
What if you expanded the story further, telling more about the interactions between the koala and the grown tree? I'd love to see more of the nuances and stories from their relationship, and it would give much more of a basis to the tree's conclusions about the koala and decision to let him stay.
Thanks for the story,
- A.
WWW Comment:
ReplyDeleteHey Mariah! This is a fantastic retelling! I love how you personified the tree branch and reassigned the character of the little boys to the grouchy koala. Great job incorporating a moral into the story, demonstrating how something perceived as ugly can grow to be understood as something beautiful and special. I also really appreciated the satirical humor regarding the "22 hours of sleep and 2 hours of eating leaves." I wonder what kind of revenge the tree would plan if it decided to act on its darker inclinations? Is it possible that the tree would ever reveal its true identity to the koala, and would this change the way the koala views the tree? Perhaps the koala would become friends with the tree and help out by carrying down other branches to plant. In the future, you might try experimenting with having more paragraph breaks to highlight the dialogue. Playing around with formatting can be a great way of drawing a reader's eye!
Hi Mariah! I would like to start off by saying I absolutely love your story. Koalas are so cute and interesting to me! I loved your description of their life just sleeping in the tree. I wonder however if it would have made more sense for the tree to grow especially for the koala, since they planted the branch. Even though the koala was timid at first, as he did not understand the branch, they still made an effort to make the branch more comfortable. Additionally, I think it would be nice to include why the koala thought the branch looked odd. I mean the koala spends all day looking at branches so was it just a little bit weird or was it massively deformed? Imagery like this would elevate your story. I also wonder about why the koala had forgotten about the branch, if I was that koala, that's all I'd think about. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this and even liked that the topic came from your personal experience. It was beautifully written, and I felt like I was there watching this grumpy koala do their day to day thing.
ReplyDeleteHey Mariah! First off, I really enjoyed reading this story because of the lesson that someone could get from it in a way, from the tree being kind to the Koala, even after it had not seen the tree in its best light. I think that your use of imagery and giving the tree "life" was nice, as it added a new touch than just normal human beings or animals having a part. I think of what might have happened if the tree maybe had not been nice to the Koala, and what would have been the outcome of that, but that is something I can think about after this. Overall, I think you took an original story and made a really great, new story out of it! Great job, I loved it!
ReplyDeleteHey! I think it’s funny how the koala was so against the branch. I mean why did that koala have to get rid of the branch? Just because it looked odd? Perhaps it could have been discussed that the branch was eating at the koala’s twenty two hours of sleep and he just couldn’t have that. It was different from the Turtle story as the suggestions that the koala had for the branch were nowhere near as bad as the suggestions made for the turtle. I think it's kind of interesting how the story is also a bit like the crab story (I think) where the branch has an opportunity to get back at the koala but decides against it (unlike the crab). You could have instead made the koala aware that the eucalyptus tree was actually from the branch. This could have added a different element to their relationship and would have shifted the story more away from the original. Both the koala and the branch could then have (and did) benefit from the branch being buried.
ReplyDeleteHi Mariah,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your story based on the first of the Two Turtle Jatakas. I actually preferred the second one over the first, but that doesn't mean I didn't like this one either! I thought your storybook was especially interesting because I just read an article on koalas yesterday, so this was a surprising find in the blog stack. Koalas are super cute, and from what I can remember their food is not particularly rich so they sleep so many hours a day in order to conserve energy while their special digestive tracks break down the leaves and their toxins, so I'd say the detail about their daily schedule you included is totally accurate!