Cinderella’s Rat is captured in a cage, but is “rescued” by the fairy godmother and becomes the coachman for Cinderella’s trip to the ball. During the ball the coachmen wait, eating in the kitchen. Suddenly, his rat sister appears, looking for him, and to prevent the other coachman from killing him, over hero says she has been enchanted. They take her to a wizard to have her changed back to a girl. The wizard makes several errors and finally creates a girl with the voice of a dog. The happy ending is that the rat’s sister is great at scaring cats away. (More complicated to describe than to read.)

Andrea Cheng, Walker and Co., NY, ©2003, ISBN 0-8027-8831-9

The Generalization Ending

Cinderella’s Rat opens with the following lines: “I was born a rat. I expected to be a rat all my days. But life is full of surprises.” The book ends with the lines: “Now I live in a cottage with my family. Food is plentiful and cats are scarce. Life is full of surprises. You might as well get used to it.”

This is a nice of example of a type of ending which you can teach students. The easiest way is to have them write a series of anecdotes and at the end write what they learned from that experience in a short line. During “RE-VISIONING” they can re-write the opening to create a line representing the life lesson, which they repeat at the end of the tale.

The Rant

Rick Mercer used to provide a RANT on CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes. He has continued on The Mercer Report. He selects a topic and “rant on” in a humorous way about that topic for a period of time. Students writing a rant could choose a fairy tale and then write a RANT complaining about something from the point of view of that character. The example that follows is from the fairy tale Cinderella, from the point of view of the fairy godmother.

For 4 creative writing ideas, click Cinderella’s Rat to download.