The Legend of Hua Mulan

My favorite piece of traditional literature (as a child and now) hands down is The Legend of Hua Mulan; The Disney version of course, the real version is actually quite depressing.
The summary according to IMDB is:

"To save her father from death in the army, a young maiden secretly goes in his place and becomes one of China's greatest heroines in the process."

While I learned about this legend through the Disney movie, and not the literature itself, it definitely helped to develop my creativity. Prior to learning about Mulan, I knew nothing of the rest of the world. Mulan was the force that drove me to want to learn about other cultures because it was my first experience with a culture that could be so drastically different from my own(even if it is not all accurate). Seeing the world as something totally different than the one I knew also sparked my curiosity for fantasy. Knowing that something so different is a possibility encouraged me to think outside of the box and in turn to become a more creative person.