Learning about mythology and folklore

This week, I am reading the Italian Popular Tales unit. The first story I read, Zelinda and the Monster, reminded me a lot of Beauty and the Beast — I just watched the live action movie version not too long ago, so I was imagining some of the scenes in the story as what they looked like in the movie. There's also some overlap between this story and the Princess and the Frog one I read last week — I wonder what it is with the trope that witches turn handsome men into frogs or beasts until a beautiful woman agrees to marry them. It might be a fun retelling to write from the witch's perspective: why does she keep doing this, and what does she gain from it? Did these men wrong her or reject her in some way? I think I could have fun writing a diary entry from the witch who turned Zelinda's husband-to-be into a monster. I loved the Italian version of Rapunzel, Angiola — I thought the ending where the little dog helped Angiola get her face returned to normal after the witch c