74. The Funny Little Woman, by Arlene Mosel

                                             74. The Funny Little Woman, by Arlene Mosel

                                                                                 

Mosel, A. (1972). The funny little woman. NY: E.P. Dutton and Company. 

The story is a Japanese folktale, set in Japan.  It is about a little old woman who likes to laugh. ("Tee-he-he-he").  She makes dumplings out of rice.  One day, one of her dumplings rolls down a hole. The funny little woman chases the lost dumpling and ends up in a strange place underground, lined with Jizo. The Jizo warn the old woman not to go after the dumpling because of wicked oni at the end of the road, but she does anyway. An oni grabs the old woman and takes her in a boat across a river to the house of the oni. The oni force the old woman to cook rice dumplings for them. They give her a magic paddle to make a full pot of rice dumplings for dinner from a single grain.  After a while, the woman becomes homesick. One afternoon, she decides that it was time for her to return home. When the oni are not looking, the woman takes the magic paddle, and escapes on a boat. The monsters returned and found that the woman is missing. They find her rowing her boat back home on the river. The oni do not swim.  To stop her they drink all the river water.  When the water dries up, the waterbed turns into nothing but a river of mud. The boat gets stuck in the mud, so the woman tried to run away. She found herself with her hands stuck, her feet stuck, and she fell into the mud. This makes the oni laugh. The oni mimics the old woman "laugh” and the water in their mouths flows back into the river.  It the woman to finish crossing to the other side in the boat.  The little woman returns home with the magic paddle. She makes and sells rice dumplings and becomes "the richest woman in all of Japan.”

If you were teaching about folktales in different cultures, this would be good for the Japanese culture.  It is easy to follow.  There are several vocabulary words that would need to be discussed before reading.  I found a flip chart on Teachers Pay Teachers that can be used while studying the book.

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