My Son, the Storyteller

Posted at 10:00 PM, Saturday, February 23, 2008

We wandered through the Botanic Garden on our way back from seeing a clown comedy show as part of the Adelaide Fringe. (I will write more about the Botanic Gardens on another occasion, since they deserve their very own entry.) Yonatan was suddenly inspired by a Gingko tree to tell his own "just so story" about how the tree came to have fan-shaped leaves. He asked me to post the story for him:

Once upon a time, there was a man in China that sold fans that were beautiful green with ruby stripes, emerald stripes, and stripes of every colour you can think of.

One day, a very powerful wizard came to buy some of the fans. The wizard asked, “Can I please have some of your beautiful, elegant fans?”

The shopkeeper didn't want to sell to such a silly man—at least he thought he was silly. So he thought it would be nice to not sell some fans to the wizard.

The wizard said, “I shall make these a yucky yucky green. If you do not give fans to the next wizard that shall come, your fans will turn into tiny little fans.”

The next day, the shopkeeper met the next wizard. The wizard said, “Can you please give me some fans?”

The shopkeeper said, “No, no, no, and no!”

The curse came true. The fans shrank, shrank and shrank until they were as tiny as leaves. Then the shopkeeper threw them into a pit, and in ten years, the fans had grown into a tree with leaves that looked like tiny fans. And from that day on, the shopkeeper always gave fans to everyone who bought one.

Here is another story Yonatan wrote about a magical garden:

Once upon a time, there was a very rich man. He had emeralds, rubies and sapphires a plenty. One day, the rich man was very very bored. A wizard came and said, “I can turn one ruby, one sappire, and one emerald into seeds for the most beautiful trees in the world.” The next day, the man planted the seeds. A few days later, he saw tiny little shoots that gleamed in the sunlight like sapphires, like emeralds, like rubies. The next day, he saw the most beautiful trees, and there were flowers that were gleaming like rubies and precious things of plenty. Then, the next day, he saw fruits gleaming in the sunlight. He made his own garden and called it “The Magical Garden.”

The next day, people came from all over the world paying lots of good money to come to there. From that day on, people came to eat fruit and to see the beautiful trees. Everybody who ate a fruit got richer, because the middle was as sapphire, a ruby, or an emerald.