Contact Alma Alexander
Website: http://www.AlmaAlexander.com/
Blog: http://anghara.livejournal.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlmaAlexander
Email: [email protected]
About the Author
Alma Alexander was born on the banks of an ancient river in a country which no longer exists.
She began telling stories as a child and never stopped. To date, Alma has written close to three million words in 12 published books. Her novel, The Secrets of Jin-shei, has been published in 14 languages in more than a score of countries. Her popular Young Adult Worldweavers series features New World magic and a heroine who is as American as Harry Potter is British.
The woman underneath the author likes books, embroidery, music ranging from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to Dvorak's New World Symphony, animals, coffee, chocolate, snow, velvet -- and, in people, kindness, intelligence and an off-the-wall sense of humor.
She is a punaholic, a chronic worrier, sentimental and passionate. She is married to a man who wooed her over the Internet and lured her to America, where she is currently owned by two cats.
Author's Note
Since these stories were carried in books distributed in British schools, they had a list of questions at the end that teachers could use to encourage a deeper understanding of the material. Some examples:
Explore the writing style and voice – can you identify the three stories as having been written by the same author?
Identify the common elements of the folktale genre in the stories.
How are paragraphs used to describe the King's journey?
Look at the use of thee, thou and thy. What contemporary third person pronouns might be used to substitute these?
Use would, ought and will to revise auxiliary verbs.
Find forsooth and vagabond. Discuss how these words have fallen out of use and identify modern equivalents.
How is the prefix un used to indicate negation?
Identify the archaic use of st endings for verbs (e.g. couldst, didst,. Generate a spelling rule for the use of such endings.
Print Edition
Once Upon a Fairy Tale Page 4