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When it comes to folk and fairy tales, can kids handle the truth?
A recent article in the Huffington Post touched on a study exposing a recent trend in bed time reading: rather than just skipping over the darker elements of some fairy tale stories at bedtime, some parents are now chucking them altogether.
Since today would be the 226th birthday of the younger of the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm, we figured it was a good time to take a look at these dark tales.
An astonishing one third of parents reported that their children were actually brought to tears by some scenes in the stories. Can’t say we blame them – the vengeful giant chasing Jack down the beanstalk, the roaring beast demanding that feeble beauty dine with him, and a witch straight up shoving Hansel and Gretel into an oven are all pretty freaky images. Some fairy tale themes are so deeply disturbing they can’t be masked with a veneer of gingerbread, no matter how sugar-coated the appropriated Grimm or Disney versions may be. Read more...
Blog
Your princess news round-up
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, princesses are all over the flipping place. Recently seemingly more than usual. Here’s what we’ve come across:
1. Is Disney evil? DeviantART-ist Chris Hill says no. Hill assigned each Disney princess (including Tinkerbell, but excluding Princess Tiana) one of the seven deadly sins. Check out his profile and click on each card to see why he chose each Disney character for her particular sin. Via Jezebel
2. Why do little girls seem to favour princesses over ballerinas, fairies or other uber-girly symbols? Money. Princesses gets diamonds, gowns, carriages, castles, etc. Mommyish says this is perhaps why Cinderella, Snow White and Ariel (Snow White??) top the list for most popular princesses. Shouldn’t Jasmine be #1 then? She has a pet tiger. That’s way better than mice friends. Also Ariel trading in her sea princessdom for land princessdom? While we don’t know what thrown Prince Eric was heir to (do we?), we suspect Ariel downgraded. Read more...
The Bunchbrary
Our grown-up and not necessarily kid-friendly picture book Bunchbrary
There are good kids’ picture books, and less good kids’ picture books. Sometimes, your kids latch onto a nice enough story with rich and vivid illustrations so you don’t mind reading it over and over while you take in the lovely pictures. Other times, your darling, clever, totally gifted and hilarious children just can’t get enough of some terribly inane story that you can’t bare to read for the 121st time. For those of you in the book or two before bed routine, here are some with adult sensibilities in mind. Note: We really don’t recommend actually reading the first one to your kids. It was forwarded to us, we laughed and wanted to share it.
1. Go the F*ck to Sleep (2011) by Adam Mansbach Read more...
