The Girl Who Spun Gold. Virginia Hamilton. Illus. by Leo & Diane Dillon. New York: The Blue Sky Press, 2000. 30 pages. $16.95 (Hardcover). ISBN 0-590-47378-6. Grades PreK-3.
My Thoughts...
Well, my initial thought was this sure seems a lot like “Rumpelstiltskin.” Thanks to a note at the end of the book I now know that the story of an evil man helping a young lady spin thread in to gold for a price is incredibly popular. I also know that The Girl Who Spun Gold is a version of that story from the West Indies. I think it would be a neat program to have many different versions of this story and read them out loud. Not only would the different names be fun, but the different dialects would be neat to hear. I loved reading this story in the West Indian dialect, but then again it could be very offensive if someone butchered or made a certain culture’s accent/dialect hokey. I don’t think the dialect in this book was hokey or inappropriate, but I know it could become so easily. I think children would absolutely adore this story and find Lit’mahn quite funny, especially because of his looks. I personally find his pictures scary, but the description of him wasn’t so terrifying. I loved the name Lit’mahn Bittyun. It made me smile to have a name match the physical description of the character. I also appreciated the way the story was written. It sounded like someone was telling it to you. I thought this was a very neat version of a familiar story, and I think it would be great to teach in classrooms or use in a library to bring in another culture and spice up traditional material
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