exaggerated beyond belief. Some-

times the hero is based on a real

person and they usually have a regu-

lar job like lumberjack, firefighter,

sailor, or railway worker.

How Were Tall Tales Spread?

Tall tales were spread by word of mouth, usually through bragging con-

tests. Often times the narrator him-

self knew he was telling a tall tale but

he was doing so to fool the city folk

who he referred to as “greenhorns”

for being so naïve.

WELCOME!

WATCH

We can’t fit the hundreds of years of information about American Tall Tales into this document so we created a supplemental playlist on our YouTube channel called SRP 2020: Story Lab Week #5—American Tall Tales, which you can

find here—

https://www.youtube.com/user/

WWPL46074/playlists

What is a Tall Tale?

Tall tales were first told at the begin-

ning of American history when peo-

ple were moving across the country

and taming the wilderness. In those

days, before people had the types of

entertainment we enjoy today—no

movies or television and many peo-

ple couldn’t read—they depended on

storytelling for entertainment. After

a long day of hard work on the ranch

or at a logging camp, people gath-

ered together and told each other

funny tales filled with exaggerations.

These tales helped people face the

difficult, dangerous, and sometimes

overwhelming task of living on the

frontier.

The heroes of these stories are usu-

ally larger-than-life and details are

Learn 2

Read 3

Make 4

Did You Know? 4

Solve 5

Explore 6

Write 6

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

American

Tall Tales June 30, 2020

Story Lab—

Week #5

Westfield

Washington

Public Library

Don’t forget to sign up for the

Summer Reading Program!

wwpl.beanstack.org

Story Lab Schedule

06/02—Egyptian Mythology

06/09—Roman & Greek

Mythology

06/16—Medieval Legends

06/23—Age of Enlightenment

Fairy Tales

06/30—American Tall Tales

07/07—Stories from Africa

07/14—Stories from Asia

07/21—Stories from

South America

07/28—Stories from

the Middle East *Please note that this playlist is housed on regular YouTube and parents are encouraged to

monitor their child’s activity in the event that any questions arise while watching.

There are a lot of interesting

tall tales about characters

throughout American history.

Check out a few of them

below:

The fictional Pecos Bill was a

legendary cowboy who grew up in

Texas. His parents lost him out of

their covered wagon near the

Pecos River. He was raised by a

pack of wolves and didn’t know he

was human until he was a teenager.

He is said to have been strong

enough, brave enough, and smart

enough to rope a tornado and take

care of all the cattle in Texas.

Paul Bunyan is a fictional giant

who invented logging and all the

tools to go with it. According to

the tall tales that exist about him,

Paul created both the Puget Sound

in the northwest and the Grand

Canyon in the southwest. Legend

has it that, to provide drinking wa-

ter for his giant blue ox, Babe, Bun-

yan scooped out the Great Lakes!

There were claims that Paul’s camp

stove covers an acre, and his

hotcake griddle is so large that it

is greased by men using sides of

bacon for skates.

Alfred Bulltop Stormalong was

a seafaring giant invented by story-

tellers who told tales about his

nautical adventures. Stories agree

that Stormalong came from an

American town somewhere along

the Atlantic coast. He didn’t stay

anywhere very long because he

outgrew every town, house, and

ship there was. Eventually, he built

his own oversized ship. It was so

big that he had to hinge the mast

tips so he could pull them down to

let the moon pass. He had a lifelong

rivalry with a Kraken, a huge, squid

-like sea monster.

The legendary John Henry is said

to have worked as a "steel-driving

man"—a man tasked with hammer-

ing a steel drill into rock to make

holes for explosives to blast the

rock in constructing a railroad

tunnel. In songs and stories, John

Henry died after out-drilling a

steam drill. Some of the tales about

John Henry could have come from

events in a real person’s life, or

from feats performed by many

different people.

David (Davy) Crockett was a

real person, born in 1786 in

Tennessee. He was a hunter and a

frontiersman and who later became

a member of the United States

Congress. He died fighting against

Mexican soldiers at the Alamo in

Texas. Legends and tall tales about

Davy Crockett came from a series

of Crockett Almanacs that were

written between 1838 and 1856.

Storytellers have added to

Crockett’s impossible feats in the

almanacs, and their legends about

Crockett grow bigger each time

they’re told.

The real-life model for Mose

the Firefighter was Moses

Humphries, a printer for a newspa-

per and a fireman during the early

1800s. The tall tales about Mose, a

city folk hero, grew from a series

of New York plays about a rough-

talking, kindhearted firefighter who

was said to be 8 feet tall and had

hands as big as Virginia hams. On

stage he rescued ladies in distress

and saved babies using his huge

stovepipe hat. People claimed he

was able to lift trolley cars over his

head and swim across the Hudson

River with two strokes.

AMERICAN TALL TALES Page 2

LEARN

STORY LAB—WEEK #5

Early Chapter Fiction Books

American Tall Tales Series (4 books)

by M. J. York

Physical books—Evergreen

eBooks—Hoopla

Far Out Folktales Series (4 books)

by Various Authors

Physical books—Evergreen

eBooks—Libby

The Tumbleweed Came Back

by Carmela LaVigna Coyle

Physical book—Evergreen

Gullible Gus by Maxine Schur

Physical book—Evergreen

READ

Page 3

Fiction Books

American Legends & Folktales Series

(16 books) by Various Authors

Physical books—Evergreen

The Misadventured Summer Of

Tumbleweed Thompson by Glenn

McCarty

eBook—Hoopla

Outlaws of Time Series (3 books) by

Nathan D. Wilson

Physical books—Evergreen

eBooks—Hoopla

Paul Bunyan vs. Hals Halson : the

giant lumberjack challenge! by Teresa

Bateman

Physical book—Evergreen

Non-Fiction Books

Pro Tip: Tall Tales live in the same

section as fairy tales which is j398.2!

American Tall Tales by Mary Pope

Osborne

Physical book—Evergreen

eBook—Libby

Cut From the Same Cloth: American

Women of Myth, Legend, and Tall

Tale by Robert San Souci

Physical book—Evergreen

Stormalong by Eric Metaxas

Physical book—Evergreen

Write Your Own Tall Tale by Natalie

Rosinsky

Physical book—Evergreen

Johnny Appleseed: a poem by Reeve

Lindbergh

Physical book—Evergreen

eAudio—Libby

AMERICAN TALL TALES

MAKE

Page 4

Thought to be the basis of the fable of Johnny Appleseed, the exploits of Nova, Ohio, native John Chapman revolve around acres of apple orchards. Rather than share them with others, Chapman took his delectable fruit and turned it into a popular libation: hard apple cider. He had plenty of apples to keep his sup-ply of cider high, which benefited the settlers that became his frequent custom-

ers.

According to Howard Means, author of “Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story,” cider was a big part of frontier life. The drink was a staple that accompanied most meals, which provided Chapman the demand to be-

come a veritable Johnny Appleseed.

Do you know what you have left over once you turn acres of apples into cider or applesauce? Seeds! Lots and lots of seeds. Did you know that you can use the seeds from apples to make jewelry? Making jewelry from apple seeds was

actually popular in America in the 1960s. Such small, ordinary things, yet when they are strung together, they become

something more substantial.

1. Rinse apple seeds after removing

from apple.

2. Use a needle to string on a thread while they're still damp. That makes poking the hole

much easier.

3. Hang the thread with needle up

somewhere safe so they can dry

4. Keep adding to your string as

you eat more apples.

5. When they're dried and you have enough for your project, remove from storage string and add to new string in interesting

designs.

DID YOU KNOW? In the early 1900s, it was popular in America to send tall tale postcards. The pictures on these cards had been changed using photo distortion, such as enlarging part of a picture without enlarging the rest of it. Some of these results were huge fruits and vegetables that were too large to fit in a wagon; giant fish that could fill a railroad flatcar; and gigantic rabbits that appeared with saddles on them. These rabbits looked in the pictures

like they could be ridden as if they were horses. These cards made people laugh and were quite popular in the Great Plains states.

AMERICAN TALL TALES

SOLVE

Page 5

Try writing your own tall tale—a humorous story in which realistic

details have been exaggerated to the point of being unbelievable.

Main Character

Name:

Realistic job

Other super-human traits:

Setting

Time period:

Location:

Plot

Sequence of events / adventure, discovery of problem:

Conclusion / funny way problem is solved:

You can pick a little-known character from history or create a new

one. Don’t forget the exaggerated details! Instead of saying, “He

hit the ball over the fence” you can say “he hit the ball so hard that

it flew over the fence, through the atmosphere, around the moon,

and was never seen again!”

WRITE

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EXPLORE

Next Week

Be on the look out for next week’s

Story Lab edition which will be

available on Tuesday, July 7, 2020.

We’ll be

focusing on

Stories from

Africa

If you’ve ever been to Muncie, Indiana, you may have seen one of America’s most famous characters—Paul Bunyan!

The 25 foot tall Paul Bunyan statue, now located outside of the Timbers Lounge dates from the mid-1960s, when it was created to advertise Kirby Wood Lumber Co. He’s not the only statue of Bunyan around the United States. You could see one in any of the following

locations:

Klamath, California

Cheshire, Connecticut

Portland, Oregon

Bangor, Maine | Rumford, Maine

Akeley, Minnesota | Bemidji, Minnesota | Brainerd, Minnesota

Manistique, Michigan | Ossineke, Michigan

Lakewood, Wisconsin | Eau Claire, Wisonsin