Category Archives: Hans Christian Andersen

Chalk It Up to Hans Christian Andersen

Chalk It Up to Hans Christian Andersen

                                         The Flying Trunk – A Fairytale in Chalk
   Hans Christian Andersen penned the fairy tale “The Flying Trunk” The tale was first published in 1839. I chose it for a project at the after school I work in because of its relation to flying.  For the month of April the theme at after school  is, “I will fly – Volare”. The flying related fairytale was perfect to share as the storyteller at after school. The arts and after school programming go hand in hand. With the thermometer outside climbing to an early spring 50 degrees we headed to the sidewalk for our story.
   The young man in our story inherits a sizeable fortune only to squander it down to the last few coins. Now poor, his soul possessions are his slippers, and an old dressing gown. He needs to leave where he lives and does not know where to go. A friend gifts the young man a trunk. (I used the word suitcase to help the children define this kind of trunk) The young man has nothing to put in the trunk so he gets in himself. The trunk is enchanted; its magic lifts him off in a flight across the countryside to the land of the Turks.
      He flies through this foreign country like a bird under the sun and over the mountains rivers, villages and people working in the fields.
He comes to the palace of the Sultan and sees a beautiful Princess at a tower window.
 He flies up to her and in through the open window. The princess has been kept in the tower to avoid a prophecy that she would marry poorly. He visits several times, each time sharing stories to entertain her. As expected in a fairy tale, they fall in love.  The princess tells her parents of her suitor and they come to the tower to meet him.  He tells them a story, they enjoy it. He is a good looking young man with a magical flying trunk, they agree the couple  should be married!
In celebration of the wedding the young man buys a big box of fireworks. He flies over the city with the fireworks setting them off in the night sky.
He lands his trunk in the city to tell everyone his story and why he is lighting the fireworks. Sadly he does not watch over his trunk and the sparks of the fireworks cause it to catch fire. The fire incinerates his trunk,  nothing is left.

He can no longer fly to the tower to see his beautiful bride. She sits at the windows and her tears fall to the ground.

Once again he has nothing but his slippers and an old dressing gown. He wanders the streets of the land of the Turks telling stories.
I told the story to the children once straight through, then told it in pieces noting a section of sidewalk for each image they could draw. This was a chance to reinforce story sequencing with the children.They worked on their picture and visited up and down to see what others were doing. There was a lot of discussion of what things should look like. This allowed us to talk about what each person sees in their mind when they hear a story and differences in how they draw it with chalk. At the end we walked the length of the story and everyone told a part to go with their chalk drawing.
Our vocabulary words from this story:
Trunk                                  foreign                           Volare                   
Enchanted                         inherit                            possession
Turks                                  palace                             Sultan
Prophecy                           suitor                              entertain  
wander                              incinerates                    dressing gown
fortune                               squander
 
A Previous adventure with chalk and fairy tales:   http://bit.ly/1ei3XF5