Jumping in... New Fiction/Traditional story, myth or religious work

Thought to work on this week :

I am a social studies teacher. My 6th grade curriculum focuses on ancient civilizations. What is enduring ? What should we take away from earlier groups ?

I am an avid reader. What are the themes do I see recurring ? How do they relate to these same themes, or characters or plot events that also were important to earlier cultures ?

Here is one of the new common core LA  curriculum standards for 8th grade literature :

Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of
events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or
religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the
material is rendered new.

 

Questions I'd like to explore when "unpacking this standard"  and deciding how students can benefit from having this skill .....

 What is considered modern fiction ? 20 years ? 50 years ? If this is a grade 8 standard do you think they mean a childrens story or one for adults ? 

What are the "traditional stories", myths or works from religion that YOU consider worthy of being part of our cultural texts.

Should we talk about American culture or multicultural ? 

So teachers, friends, parents, scholars, professionals.. chime in ... list some texts new or old that you think are worthy of being explored to address this standard.

Also a prediction on assessment. Do you think students will be asked to provide their own example of this in an essay ? Do you think they will be given two texts ? Will it matter if they are/ are not familiar with these texts ? 

I'd love to hear from you, but will also be trying to collect my own examples and share them as we go along !