Culturalized Story Resources – The GiggleIT Project

To create a culturalized story, the author takes a well-known story and changes it to reflect their country/culture. It’s useful to include a glossary of unusual or slang words if your culturalized story will be read outside your school.

The “Our Snow White” Spotlight Project in the “Through My Window: The Colors of My World” theme sets the stage for a culturized story.

In this example, the story of Little Red Riding Hood has been adapted to suit Australian readers.

Little Blue Riding Bruce, part 1 – culturalized by Patricia Carmichael

      Once upon a time there was a little boy called Bruce who loved eating lamingtons, just like his granddad. Bruce lived way out in the bush, past Burke somewhere, where it was hot, dry and dusty with lots of flies. One good thing about this (for Bruce anyway) was the fact that there was not much water around, so he didn’t have to wash his face and hands much or change his socks or brush his teeth very often.

      Now Bruce lived on a huge cattle station and didn’t go to a school. He plugged in his earphones every day and listened on the radio to his teacher who lived far, far away. He wrote out all his lessons by hand, drew beautiful pictures of cows and of cattle dogs, and generally pretended to be interested in school work.

      However, he was really dreaming of his next weekend visit to Grandad so that they could guzzle lamingtons together and ride horses and chase cattle with Blue, his red cattle dog.

      Finally, Saturday came around, and his mother gave him strict instructions as she packed his saddle bags with 5 dozen lamingtons and his backpack with 5 dozen more. She firmly jammed his new and sparkling tooth brush and a tube of Colgate toothpaste in his pocket.

      “Remember to wash your hands before you eat, change your socks at least once, and brush your teeth before you go to bed. The same goes for you too, Blue. And do not, under any circumstances, stop for strangers. Kiss Granddad for me and tell him to do the same.”

      Off Bruce went, across the brickety-brackety bush, through slishety-sloshety creeks, and up and down the drubbidy-drabbedy hills.

      But the most frightening part of the journey was riding through the Giant Wombat Tunnel, an ancient labyrinth of dark and stinky wombat holes that thousands of years ago housed giant wombats.

      Little did Bruce realize that a giant wombat still lived in the tunnels, the last of his race. It was a fat and smelly wombat called Rodney, who had a bad dandruff problem and very, very bad breath.

      Rodney the fat and very smelly wombat had been watching Bruce for ages and knew that he could grab Bruce and his lamingtons. Yes, Rodney loved lamingtons too. He kept low, hiding behind a Brolga, waiting…

      Suddenly, Bruce caught a whiff of something foul and kicked Snow, his black horse, into a gallop. Alas, the crafty wombat had him trapped, caught in a giant spider web. Rodney was salivating and puffing, slobbering over his feast as he wrapped Bruce, Snow, and Blue up in fluoro spider fibre.

      They watched with horror as Rodney smacked on the lamingtons, moaning and schlomping his way through 10 dozen lamingtons. Suddenly Rodney squealed in pain. His two giant front choppers fell out and Bruce knew just what he could do to escape this terrible predicament… (to be continued?)

Author: Patricia Carmichael, Teacher Librarian, Concordia Lutheran College, Toowoomba Queensland, Australia

Explanatory Note: Australian slang often uses words which have opposite meanings to describe things, so someone with red hair is often called Blue. In this case Bruce’s Red Heeler cattle dog is called Blue.

As a collaborative Project between educators and students around the world, the GiggleIT Project operates under a Creative Commons license which allows everyone to share ideas and resources while still recognizing the work done by the original authors.

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