An entry from KentishBookBoy

 

Retelling the classics

Like the majority of school children the Kentishbookboy has been learning from home since the new year and once in a while I have been called to see if I can help explain a question from the work set. Who knew that in America the terms trapezium and trapezoid have the exact opposite definitions to the ones we use this side of the pond? I guess I've learned something from the Year 6 maths curriculum too!

All the English work has been centred around the Oscar Wilde story The Selfish Giant. Thanks to the eBook library service I was able to also download the story and read along with KBB and be involved in the work. It was good to stretch my mind and look at a text in a critical way again.

The final task for the class was to rewrite the story but from a different viewpoint, my first thought was to pretend to be one of the children and to retell it in the first person but Kentishbookboy decided to use the third person but make it all about the giant.

The feedback came from the school this week and we found out that if they'd been in school the work would have won a 'head teacher's award,' it has also been featured on the school's blog for year 6. Unsurprisingly we are all very proud of this piece of work - he had no help in writing this, the first we saw of it was when he was ready to submit!

Usually KBB and I have a 'Valentine's Day Out' around now but this year it can't happen, and while we're planning lots of fun as soon as it is allowed my Valentine for him is to publish his writing here.

THE SELFISH GIANT

By Kentishbookboy

Every weekday, as they were returning home from another school day, the children went and played in the Giant’s enormous garden.

It was a massively vast area, with smooth, lime-green grass. Gorgeous peach trees were here and there, while multi-coloured flowers in bunches were scattered around the lawn. Sweet-voiced birds were perched precariously on the trees, singing their heart out as if at a concert. Every so often, the children would pause in their game and listen to its beautiful, high-pitched voice.

“How we love it here!” the children would shout into the cloudless sky.

One fine day, the Giant returned home. He had stayed with a friend in Cornwall for almost seven years and was surprised to see the children playing in his once-pristine garden and wrecking it! “What do you think you’re doing in my garden?” he boomed at them. Petrified, the poor children fled the grounds and out of the gates.

Distraught that they’d trespassed into his property, the Giant constructed a towering stone wall around the perimeter and wrote a notice:

ANY TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

He was a very self-centred Giant.

The hapless children didn’t have anywhere to play in. They found playing on the road boring because of the hard stones and dust. They strolled around the garden border after lesson time, and conversed about the pretty garden and its wonders inside. “How we loved it there”, they said to each other.

The Spring soon came, stunning blossoms and birds coming out all over the country. However, in the Giant’s garden, it remained winter. The birds daren’t sing because of the children being forbidden, and the marvellous peach trees forgot to bloom. One time, a flower awoke, lifting its head above the soil, but it saw the notice and slid back amongst the soil again.

Snow and Frost were the only people who were pleased that Spring had forgotten the garden. “We will live here all year through.” they decided. With a sweep of her great white cloak, Snow covered the grass, while the Frost decorated the trees with silver. The North Wind came and roared all day, damaging buildings as he went. They invited Hail to visit, and he came. He constantly rattled the roof tiles until most broke off. Dressed in grey, breath like ice, he was a force to be reckoned with. 

“The Spring is so late in arriving, and I don’t know why,” said the Giant, who was resting on the windowsill. “I wonder when the weather will improve.”

But however much he pondered it, the Spring never turned up in his garden, nor the Summer. Autumn came and produced rich, succulent fruits, but none to the Giant’s trees. Winter, it seemed, was permanent in his garden. 

The Giant was resting on his bed one crispy morning, when he awoke to gorgeous music outside. It was a beautiful linnet chirping away in the early sunlight, but since the Giant hadn’t heard birdsong in ages, it was the greatest sound on the planet to his ears and as he jumped out of bed, he was pleased to think that Spring had finally come again.

Children had snuck in via a hole in the wall, scurrying through the blossoms, sitting down on the trees. Birds were singing their little hearts out, soaring above the branches. One tree, though, was still in winter, and underneath, a tiny boy. 

The tree bent down its branches for the boy to climb up on, but the juvenile boy was just too small to reach.

Hard heart dissolving, he realised how selfish he’d been. “I will put that boy into the tree, knock down the wall and my garden will be the children’s playground forever.” The children ran for their lives when they saw him, but the boy, who was too busy crying, didn’t notice the Giant behind him. When he placed the boy in the tree, it at once bloomed with flowers. Grateful, the boy reached down and kissed the Giant on the neck.

The children who’d ran away noticed that the Giant wasn’t being selfish or cruel to the boy, so they ran back and joined in the fun again. And the people going to the market at noon saw the Giant playing with the children in the prettiest garden ever.

At the end of the day, the Giant went to the gate to bid them goodnight. “Where is that little boy?” he asked.                                                                                                         “We don’t know,” the children replied. “He must have gone away”

This made the Giant very disappointed.

The little boy was never seen again, even as the Giant aged and became ancient and frail. He could only watch the children play now, and while they did that, he admired his garden.

One misty winter morning, the old Giant looked out at his garden while dressing. He knew that his flowers were getting their winter kip, and Spring would be back soon. Then he saw it: the farthest tree was covered with bright white blossoms, sparkling silver fruit, and underneath it, the little boy that had kissed him all those years ago!

In hastened joy the Giant dashed downstairs, across the garden and then stopped abruptly before the boy. His face was red with anger and all he wanted to know was who had hurt the boy. The Giant could see that there were the imprints of nails in his hands and feet. He was relieved when the boy replied, “Do not worry, for these are Love’s wounds. You let me have fun in your garden; you shall now join me to go to my garden; Paradise.”

And so when the children ran into the garden to play, they found the Giant under the tree, white blossoms all over him, unmoving.