The Story of Ferdinand
Ferdinand is a very unusual bull. In his youth, he was quite different from the other young bulls who liked to “run and jump and butt their heads together.” Ferdinand prefers the peace of sitting under his favorite cork tree and smelling the flowers. Years pass and Ferdinand grows to be a very big and strong bull, but still he spends his days under the cork tree smelling the flowers while the other bulls practice fighting for the bull fights in Madrid. When men arrive at the pasture one day to pick the “biggest, fastest, roughest bull to fight in the bull fights in Madrid,” Ferdinand isn’t interested and so he goes to his cork tree to sit down. Unfortunately, he sits on a bumble bee and is stung. He jumps and snorts, puffs and butts, and paws the ground in a frenzy. The men are so impressed with him that they choose him for the bull fights, cart him up, and take him to Madrid.
On the day Ferdinand was to fight in the bull ring, he followed a parade of Banderilleros, Picadors, and the Matador. He was called “Ferdinand the Fierce” and all the bull fighters were afraid of him. But when Ferdinand entered the ring, “he saw the flowers in all the lovely ladies’ hair and he just sat down quietly and smelled.” He wouldn’t fight no matter what the Banderilleros, Picadors, and Matador did and so they took him home to spend the rest of his days sitting under his cork tree and just quietly smelling the flowers.
The Story of Ferdinand
was written in 1936 by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson. It is a story that I had read many times to my children when they were quite young and one that continues to touch my heart to this day. Ferdinand marches to the beat of a different drummer. He has no interest in fighting and is not swayed by the peer pressure of seeing his contemporaries constantly pawing the ground and butting their heads together. He’s a loner who is happiest when he is sitting under his favorite cork tree and smelling flowers “just quietly.” Even when he was taunted and provoked by the bull fighters while he was in the bull ring in Madrid, he did not fight. Given his pacifism, which is seriously challenged, Ferdinand maintains his integrity.
C. S. Lewis, in his essay, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children” (
On Stories and Other Essays on Literature
, pp. 31-43), says that ideally the children’s story “is simply the right form for what the author has to say, then of course readers who want to hear that will read the story or re-read it, at any age.” With this in mind, I believe
The Story of Ferdinand
fits Lewis’s criteria. In very simple language, with some repetitive phrasing, Munro’s book serves as a kind of meditation: “He liked to sit just quietly and smell the flowers” is repeated several times throughout the story. Its message of pacifism is as important for young readers as it is for teenagers and adults. Most of us are faced with provocations in our lives, be they small or large: peer pressure, competition, economic concerns, relationship problems, etc. Ferdinand offers us the zen of sitting quietly as opposed to butting heads.
Reading and Discussion
From the civil disobedience of typing cows to the civil unrest of Native Americans desperately trying to resurrect their culture in the Ghost Dance, students have been introduced to ideas about the sanctity of all life and the price that we pay when we loose our reverence for it. Standing up for one’s belief in the face of great opposition requires great strength and integrity. History has given us a few stellar examples, among them, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma (great soul) of India and Martin Luther King. The fictional character of Ferdinand also fits this mold with regard to his zen-like approach of simply sitting down. After sharing in an oral reading of
The Story of Ferdinand
by Munro Leaf, students will discuss the story in relation to the kind of conflicts that they come up against in their lives and will be asked if “sitting just quietly” might be a way to resolve them.
LESSON SEVEN: Animal Short Stories
In this last lesson of the unit, students will be instructed to review the information that we have covered as well as their journals and writing assignments. We will review some of the situations in the stories we have read: cows demanding electric blankets, a hunter becoming prey, the Blackfeet tribe in need of food, etc. Students will be asked to brainstorm for new situations that appeal to them in which an animal is a key character. Once they do, they can begin writing. Knowing exactly where the story will wind up is not important at this stage in the writing, but description about the setting and dialogue from the characters are. As students create the world of their stories and let their characters speak, they may find some interesting ideas unfolding. How their characters will solve problems or meet challenges -- or not -- should become an exercise in self-discovery.
After they have written their first drafts, students will peer-edit for content, spelling, and grammar. With respect to content, they will refer to the writing pedagogy that we have covered in the unit: plot (especially plot twists and irony), theme, and personification. In their second drafts, students should make revisions and fine-tune their stories to make sure that their themes are discernable. What are they really trying to say to readers? Why are their stories important? As readers, we don’t want to be hit over the head with theme, but a good story will usually make us want to ponder a bit, which can result in a knowing smile or even an “Ah ha!” Those are the moments that acknowledge the writer’s integrity.
Students will continue to write, edit, and revise their stories until they are satisfied that they are done. We will present the finished stories in class and discuss their merit with respect to descriptions, characterizations, and themes, i.e.,
Are we transported to the author’s world? Are we sympathetic to the protagonist? Are the complications presented challenging? Did we discover something about our world and ourselves?
Final stories will be included in a class anthology of animal stories, which we will produce as a culminating activity for the unit.
