The Korean Cinderella

By: Shirley Climo
Illustrated by: Ruth Heller
Multicultural Literature
~This version of Cinderella is set in Korea, where an old man and his wife want to have a child. They planted a pear tree for good fortune, and sure enough they had a little girl and named her Pear Blossom. Pear Blossom was growing up beautifuly, but one year her mother dies. Herals father re marries a mean woman named Omoni who a duaghter named Peony. Omoni and Peony were jealous of Pear Blossoms beauty so they were mean to her and treated her as a servant. One day Pear Blossom was sent to fill a water jug that had a hole in it. They jug also had a frog in it who was majic and helped Pear Blossom fix the hole. The next day Omoni made Pear Blssom scatter a huge sack of rice over the courtyard and told her to polish each grain. Pear Blossom said "will no one in this world help me?" Then sparrows flew down and pecked the rice untill it was all polished and piled it into the corner. Next, the village was having a festival and Pear Blossom was allowed to go only if she weeded the rice patties. Pear blossom though " Who could do such a task?" and suddenly a huge black ox came through and weeded the rice patties. Pear Blossom hurried to the festival, but on her way she stopped to take her shoe off and get a rock out, when the magistrate came down the road. The magistrate yelled stop to his bearers, but Pear Blossom thought he was talking to her and she got frightened and ran down the road without her shoe. The magistrate was sturck by her beauty and went to find her. He found her at the festival and asked her to be his bride.
~This is a really gret version of Cinderlla with a Korean twist. This book contains a lot of Korean words that they use and define. This could be used during a multicultural study of Korea and talk about how this version differs from the traditional Cinderalla. You could also have students write down the Korean words that were used in the story and create their own story that contains these Korean words. Also have students compare the names of the characters and also the illustrations.