Bedtime Myths For Children of All Ages: Solar Stories

By Anahi Pari-di-Monriva

These are the stories, freely embellished, told by the author to the continuous delight of the children in her life, and now shared with the world at large! These stories are based on myths involving the Sun, told in the order of the Sun's journey, from East to West!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Language Development Company, LLC
• Release date: Oct 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9780984648443

Anahi Pari-di-Monriva

Anahi Pari-di-Monriva holds a Master of Arts degree in Applied Linguistics. She is a world traveler, avid reader, and story-teller. She has enjoyed a successful career as an interpreter and translator, including having translated "Journey of Faith", a book on the Jubilee Year, from the Italian. In her second career as an educator, she has also enjoyed the rapt attention of kindergarten and high school students as she dramatically modeled how to put the classics in one's own words.

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BEDTIME MYTHS FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES:

SOLAR STORIES

by Anahi Pari-di-Monriva

Copyright 2011 by Anahi Pari-di-Monriva

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 978-0-9846484-4-3 (Smashwords Edition)

To Granny and Grenno, Nonna, Ennio, and Luisa

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TELLING THE STORIES

TEN FACTS ABOUT OUR SUN

OBSERVING THE SUN

AND THEN THERE WAS ONE...or YI, THE ARCHER GOD, AND THE TEN SUNS

THE SUN GIRL AND THE MOON BOY

ICARUS

HELIOS AND PHAETHON

THANK YOU!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC

UPCOMING E-BOOKS FROM THIS AUTHOR AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC

Introduction

Many legends, myths, and stories about the sky arose in order to provide answers to questions our ancestors had about natural occurrences such as world order, the cycle of life, creation itself, the difference between men and women, the causes of night and day, death, and the afterlife. For us, with the advent of science and technology, the sky has no meaning beyond what science has already explained. There are no gods hurling lightning bolts down from the heavens or exhaling their breath causing the wind to whirl around the Earth. However, for our children, the sky contains the same wonders as it did for the ancients. Our children mirror the minds of the ancients, by virtually asking the same questions about what they notice as did our ancestors.

According to Joseph Campbell, an authority on myths, the mythological hero’s quest is really a story about how humans navigate the passages through life to maturity, passages that we must survive in our lifelong encounter with our environment, with the world. The sun, for example, like the hero, seems to undertake an adventure of danger and triumph and, so, its yearly journey across the sky is partly grafted to hero stories; and this hero is, in fact, our own aspiring soul.

Simply put, stories are not simply a way to pass the time, to entertain; they are a way to make sense of what we encounter in our environment, things we do not control. Good stories make us feel as if we understand why things happen, why they are the way they are. This feeling of understanding in turn gives us confidence in the future and willingness to act, even when we face the unknown. In short, stories are a practical tool for survival.

We see the stories-as-a-tool-for-survival phenomenon at work when children play. Through play, they, too, tell stories in order to make sense of their experience, to order their world. Telling stories to our children, from fairy tales to stories about events in our own childhood, allows them to connect to a historical continuum of humanity, to feel part of the greater human community.

Telling the Stories

Aristotle established that a good story has a logical construction with a beginning, middle, and end, a plot. In oral story telling, you also need to find your voice. In re-telling these myths to the children in my life (and here in this book), I admit to some embellishment and poetic license, in part