The stories

Alice has been free for anyone in South Africa to retell since 1949, the Wizard of Oz since 1970 and Peter Pan since 1988. Our Copyright Act protects a book for the author’s life and fifty years from the end of the year in which the author dies,¹ and Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum and J. M. Barrie died in 1898, 1919 and 1937 (that’s our reading of the Act, not legal advice). Jack and Jakkals are folk tales, with no author to wait for. We retell all five in our personalised storybooks, each with your child as the hero and one skill at its heart, or we can write your child an original adventure about whatever they love.

The skill is part of the plot. Your child counts their way along the golden road, makes ten to climb the beanstalk, opens doors with the first sound of their name down the rabbit hole, says how they feel flying over Table Mountain at night, and helps a clever jackal and hungry old Wolf learn to take turns in the Karoo. The books themselves are new and nobody has tested them yet; the skills they practise, and the ways of practising them, are well studied.

Each skill is chosen for your child’s age, using South Africa’s curriculum from Grade R up. CAPS is our reference; the Department of Basic Education doesn’t endorse us.

Why the old stories?

Children already love them, and because they are free to retell, we can tell every tale in our own words and pictures, rather than any film’s. Going back to the old texts is half the fun, because later versions changed more than most of us remember. In Baum’s 1900 book, Dorothy’s magic shoes are “silver shoes with pointed toes”;² the ruby slippers were made for MGM’s 1939 film, to show off its Technicolor.³

Each story’s page below tells you where its tale came from, what the original really says, and what our retelling practises, with something to try at bedtime.

Pick their story

• 

  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900

  The Golden Road: the real Oz, and the stars at the end of it

  The Wizard of Oz as Baum wrote it in 1900, with silver shoes, green spectacles and grey Kansas, and The Golden Road, where your child counts to the stars.

• 

  An English folk tale

  Up the Beanstalk: an old giant, a new friend, and the pairs that make ten

  The oldest known printing of Jack and the Beanstalk (1734) is a joke. Its history, King Lear’s Fee-fi-fo-fum, and a retelling where every climb makes ten.

• 

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

  Down the Rabbit Hole: Alice, and the doors that open to a sound

  How a story told on a river in 1862 became Alice, why its first printing was recalled, and the retelling where every door opens to a first sound.

• 

  Peter and Wendy, 1911

  Second to the right, and straight on till morning

  There’s no star in Peter Pan’s directions. Where Barrie’s boy came from, the hospital he was given to, and a Cape Town retelling about naming feelings.

• 

  A South African folk tale

  Jakkals, Wolf and the cleverest trick of all

  The jackal tales came into Afrikaans from Khoekhoe storytellers, and Wolf was really a hyena. Their history, and a Karoo retelling about sharing.

• 

  An original story

  Their own adventure

  Tell us what they love and we’ll write an original story around it, set somewhere they know. How a theme book works, and a South African wonder for each.

Where the oldest of these tales came from, and why they still matter, is in our essay why fairy tales still matter. What each skill means at school, grade by grade, is in Learning.

Sources

1. Copyright Act 98 of 1978 (South Africa), section 3(2)(a). acts.co.za. Our reading of the Act, not legal advice.
2. Baum, L. F. (1900). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter II. Chicago: George M. Hill. Project Gutenberg eBook #55. gutenberg.org/ebooks/55
3. Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers (fact sheet). americanhistory.si.edu