Summary: The Baby Website recently surveyed 3,000 British parents about fairy tales and the results, at least for a blog like mine, are not good. While 66% of the survey respondents said that they believe that classic fairy tales have "stronger morality messages" than contemporary children's stories, they don't believe that the old tales by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen among others are appropriate for 21st-century kids. The classics, in the view of parents, are too scary, too sexist or too socially out-of-step and not politically correct. Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs? Offensive to little people. The Gingerbread Man? Nope, too violent. The tasty snack with two legs suffers a gruesome, violent death when he gets eaten by a fox. Hansel and Gretel? An uncomfortable portrayal of parental neglect and abandonment. What about Cinderella? Scratch her off the list as well. She's essentially a housebound slave who can only be freed by attracting the interest of a rich man. Here is the listing of the winners and losers in the children's stories sweepstakes, according to the survey: TOP BEDTIME STORIES OF 2008 1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle (1969) 2. Mr Men, Roger Hargreaves (1971) 3. The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson (1999) 4. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne (1926) 5. Aliens Love Underpants, Claire Freedman & Ben Cort (2007) 6. Thomas and Friends from The Railway Series, Rev.W.Awdry (1945) 7. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (1908) 8. What a Noisy Pinky Ponk!, Andrew Davenport (2008) 9. Charlie and Lola, Lauren Child (2001) 10. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Robert Southey (1837) TOP 10 FAIRY TALES WE NO LONGER READ 1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 2. Hansel and Gretel 3. Cinderella 4. Little Red Riding Hood 5. The Gingerbread Man 6. Jack and the Beanstalk 7. Sleeping Beauty 8. Beauty and the Beast 9. Goldilocks and the Three Bears 10. The Emperor’s New Clothes Personally I believe that the classics are classics for a reason. They touch upon our universal fears and doubts, not to mention that they are memorable and entertaining. They also crank up your imagination. Remember what it was like as a kid picturing, in your mind's eye, the image of a boy using a gigantic vine to climb up to the sky? The very first book I can remember reading on my own as a child was an illustrated anthology of fairy tales. I read and reread that book so many times that the pages eventually started to fall out. Motherlode, the New York Times parenting blog, also discussed this survey and the reader reaction was immense. All viewpoints were reflected but the majority were in favor of not watering down the old-time fairy tales. Here is a sample of the reader comments: I think fairy tales should be required reading. They are foundational archetypes for much of modern literature. If we erradicate all these unpleasent or uncomfortable ideas from literature it will all be bland nicey, nicey crap. No wonder kids are not reading. Great literature needs to have tension and even a bit of un PC challenge to society’s norms. Plus these fairy tales often have many cultural narratives. One thing my daughter and I have done with great pleasure is to read the many variations of Cinderella and compare how each culture depicts the conflict. — Charlotte Years ago, I had a literature professor tell me that the reason that so many classic fairy tales featured an absent mother was because it was one of the few deep tragedies that a small child could immediately understand and respond to - and that in years (and centuries) past, many women died during their childbearing years, leaving many, many children to grow up without their mothers. That said, I’m in no rush for my children to vicariously experience the loss of their mother, classic literature or not. -Anna The loss of parents sets a child up for an adventurous, if sometimes frightening life. When these stories were written,
