Then vs. Now

 After my initial readings of the Thousand and One Nights where I skipped out of order I then went through and read the introduction through the Story of the Third Calendar, Son of a King of the ELF Lang translation. While I enjoyed the stories, I couldn't help but to compare my reading of them to what I remember of reading them as a child- I have only a collection of some of the stories and they were in miniature books in a box set. I'm sure that they were much more simplified than the translation that we are reading for class, but I remember being completely enthralled with the tales. I believe that in part this was contributed to my age and the fact that I had my own collection of books; but I that that the oral storytelling tradition that we touched on in class played a major role for me, as well as illustrations. My mother read to me every evening, and my grade school teachers tough primarily through story telling. When we had poems or songs to learn we were always given the words, the lines by our teacher verbally, and we repeated them back. We never read the words to learn them, even after the younger grades when we couldn't yet read. As we spoke about, hearing these tales told would be the traditional way to hear them, and it allows the minds of the audience to wander and add to the basic storyline with their own color and dreams. So I suppose my point is that some stories hold for me more magic in the way they are told to me, rather than perhaps my full analysis and probing into the text.