Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Rapunzel Battles the Gruffalo

From the New York Times parenting blog Motherlode, Are Fairy Tales Too Scary For Children? by Lisa Belkin:

Of the 3,000 British parents polled by the TheBabyWebsite.com, earlier this month, 50percent said they would not read fairy tales to their children until they were at least five-years-old. Of those, 20 percent said they rejected the oldies as politically incorrect, while close to that number, 17 percent, said the stories would give their children nightmares.

I'll let you read the rest of the post without quoting the best bits here. While I'm glad that the discussion of fairy tales continues to thrive, I'd like to see more mainstream articles move beyond the "Are fairy tales good for children?" motif to discussing children's reactions to particular fairy tales and delving into some of the lesser-known stories.

Check out The Princess Questionnaire. The post will only be up until January 19th, as it's part of the author's thesis.

Thanks to Pipers at the Gates of Dawn for the article and tony.dowler.com for the princess thesis link.

4 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

Oh, good. Since you posted on this, I won't. And I agree: how many times can we have the same shallow discussion of "Oh, some fairytales aren't meeting parental approval" and discuss which ones are, and why, and some of their timeless elements, and what's new in the world of the faery and fey???

Beth Kephart said...

Wow, this is interesting! I didn't know Lisa Belkin had this blog, but I do agree with you that the inquiries into the topic must begin to dig deeper.

Jules at 7-Imp said...

Thanks for the linkage. The are-fairy-tales-scary discussion makes me CRAZY, too. Bettelheim Bettelheim Bettelheim. It's worth a read, no matter what one thinks of him otherweise.

I'm with TadMack (and you) -- let's move on -- and have more discussions like the Snow Maiden one!

Saints and Spinners said...

I love talking about fairy tales. I appreciate Sarah Beth Durst's "Obscure Fairy Tales" series for this reason. Here is her latest post:
http://sarahbethdurst.blogspot.com/2009/01/obscure-fairy-tale-blue-belt.html