February 10, 1999
'Yo, Wolf': Rappers put new spin on fairy tales
By Garret Leiva
Herald staff writer
"Little Red Riding Hood" was in the 'hood, the Three Little Pigs were phat and "The Hungry Wolf" was a real dawg.
Raping instead of merely reading, sixth graders at East Bay Elementary put a new spin on three traditional fairy tales as they performed a three act play, "It's a Hard Wolf's Life: A Wolf Pack Rap." The performance, part of a language arts poetry unit, featured 28 students who took center stage wearing wide-leg baggies and rapping about "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Hungry Wolf."
Held Tuesday in the school library, the fairy tale rap was based on the book, "Yo, Hungry Wolf" by David Vozar, said librarian Shaun Harvey. While rap verses came from the pages of Vozar's book, costumes and scenery were created from student imagination. Construction paper, scissors and glue provided a backdrop of grandma's house from "Little Red Riding Hood" along with a 'D.J.'s Donuts' sign for "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," a story about a junk food junkie wolf set in a bakery.
The "Wolf Pack Rap," noted Harvey, was a follow-up to last year's beat generation-style Cocoa Cafe where beret beatniks, hepcats and cool chicks spouted out poetry to the beat of a bongo.
"When school started this fall the first thing students asked me was, 'Are we going to do that poetry thing,'" noted Harvey, who started the poetry performances last year after attending a state librarian conference.
Equally involved in bustin' rhymes was sixth-grade language arts teacher Mary Kay Hicks. Over the course of two weeks, groups of students were responsible for creating their own costumes, props and scenery and well as rapping to the beat. One student, Jacob Edmonds, even wrote and contributed his own original introduction and conclusion lyrics.
"They love to perform and this gives them a real hands-on opportunity," said Hicks, who noted that students even priced out and ordered donut holes for their audience. "They like to take things themselves and create. We gave them guidelines, but they worked together on scenery and costumes."
While it remains uncertain what musical genre or generation will be covered next year, it certainly seems that poetry performance is here to stay at East Bay Elementary.
"There are certain things you count on as a sixth-grader -the end of the year Mackinac Island trip, sitting on the bleachers instead of the gym floor during assembly and some type of performance for the entire school," Hicks noted. "It is something that is kind of becoming a tradition - one of those rites of passage."