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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Sam Valentino began his second class at the Westwood Library last Tuesday. His first class focused on teaching art through mythology. This class teaches art as well, but this time, it’s through folklore.
“I’m stressing ‘folklore’ because people tend to think of fairy tales, they think of Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, and they are folklore, but they’re ones that everyone knows," Valentino said. "I want to introduce kids to ones they very possibly do not know.”
Primarily a freelance artist, Valentino is also a dynamic story teller and educator.
In this first class, Valentino told the story of Baba Yaga, a character with which some of the kids were surprisingly familiar.
“I was surprised, a lot of the kids had heard of Baba Yaga, and Lizzy [the Children’s Librarian] and I were talking about how Baba Yaga has made a sort of resurgence in young adult fiction recently,” he said.
“They may not know that story in particular, but they would know of her, and that’s what I’m trying to do with this.” There are four students who overlap between his last class and this one - one of the reasons Valentino decided to switch to folklore. “I could have kept teaching mythology, but I wanted to change it up.”
How did Valentino choose the stories to tell his students?
“Generally, any one that’s interesting! But also ones that are more epic. There’s a lot of Aborigine folk tales, as opposed to the mythology I did, but it’s often like an epigram, like an Aesop’s fable,” he explained. “I’m looking more for stories that have longer themes, so probably like China. There’s another story I like called 'Prince Ring,' and that’s Scandinavian. I just like it because it’s so incredibly surreal. There’s also French ones.”
Their last class will overlap with the Chinese New Year, creating a great opportunity to mix in the modern cultural aspects of China with historical folklore.
Each week the story is accompanied by an art project. This week, the project was more general folk art.
“It’s not necessarily tied to any one culture of folklore, it’s more of a technique,” Valentino explained. “Before, I taught the Egyptian hieroglyphs because we were talking about ancient Egypt, but this is more doing fairytale art based on folklore. It’s the kind of art project that is suitable for everyone, so if someone isn’t that used to art, they can just copy. But for those who are like, 'I want to do it all!', they can be creative as they want.”
While the class teaches kids artistic skills as well as basic stories, Valentino touches on the fact that learning folklore is about much more than that.
“There is a lot more to folk tales than just the ones you know from seeing Disney movies. There’s this super-rich cultural tradition that is surreal and mind-opening, and it’s very creative,” he said.
“It’s not only a new story but it’s a new way of thinking, and if I can bring that to the class – I teach them art, which I love – but it’s also 'Look at the world! The world is big!'”
