Reading Diary A: Twenty-Two Goblins

The unit I chose for this week was Twenty-Two Goblins. I chose this unit because I'd never heard of these tales before, and I liked that every story had a riddle in it. The author did a great job in terms of character development throughout the stories.

I liked how the king was introduced in the Introduction, how he was described as a very impressive man that was both noble and kind. I also really liked how the payment was placed in the fruit brought by the monk. That must have made for mountains of jewels when all of the fruit was broken apart! I thought it was interesting how the goblin was introduced. The introduction to this character was very dark, and it's not the sort of introduction I'm used to reading about in stories. Reading about a hanging body that was possessed by a goblin was a little bit unsettling, but I thought it was just sinister enough to be intriguing yet not sinister enough to be horrifying.

(The King and the Goblin)

While reading every story, I couldn't help but be anxious to get to the end just to see how the king would respond to each riddle. In The Three Lovers, his answer surprised me because of how he analyzed it. I honestly didn't even know how to begin to answer such a riddle, especially under the threat of death, but his answer made sense within the context of the story and the culture that these stories came from. Reading the king's answers and thinking about them made the stories even cooler for me.