Grimms' Fairy Tales
Children's and Household Tales is a collection of German fairy tales published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimm's Fairy Tales. The first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called "Children's Tales," they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter.
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- Grimms' Fairy Tales (Leather-bound Classics edition)
I have been a dad for 18 years and am about to have my 7th kid. I read lots of different kids books to them, but usually when they are about 5 they start to love it when I read Grimms's Fairy Tales (before that they are bored when they hear them).
They nick name them the Death stories, and kinda laugh about how it is crazy they are stories for kids (so much disappointment when they make . But, damn if they don't always want to hear them all the time.
What is nice is there is nothing sugary sweet about them, and there are great lessons to untangle from the stories. Sometimes the lesson though is that sometimes bad stuff just happens, and you have to deal with it.
It also has a sliver of a view of how people long ago saw things and what was important then, and what still is important today.
We are almost through our second lap through the book, and I could see another lap or two through it as our next child comes into listening to it, then maybe I'll be reading it to my grandchildren.
- I have many physical books of various Eastern European and Slavic tales in my childhood home, but nothing in English or in electronic form.. Anyway, Slavic and Eastern European fairy tales are not very different from other European nations' tales and have much in common (South Europe might be a little different, but I'm not an expert to comment much) to the extend that sometimes only character names differ (or animal type). You might try Grimm's Fairy Tales[1] if haven't read yet, but aim for original/older edition[2] as originally it was quite violent but softened increasingly over time.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimms'_Fairy_Tales 2. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/
- > Blue Fairy — first introduced as a literal child-corpse with turquoise hair
He may have run out of ideas and tried to fill in a story with a dark mood in mind (speculation). The thing is that this is not that uncommon in many fantasy novels. Anyone remembers "The Color of Her Panties" by Piers Anthony? I read it, it is very cheesy (also silly, in particular when you as target audience are, say, 10 years old or something like that) but not necessarily mega-creepy either. But then you also begin to wonder ... is it just "good fun" to pick such a title? But then it is not the only instance and you begin to find more oddities. Naturally this depends on the author; some authors never run into such issues, others run into such issues.
I only saw the Pinocchio cartoon, that anime-style animation, on TV. That version was harmless from what I remember. Never read the books, but I am not so surprised about books being darker. Anyone knows the Grimm brothers? They lived from 1785–1863 and 1786–1859 respectively. I clearly remember that some of those drawings were really dark. It's a bit like dark horror stories if you look at it today - here is a summary:
https://discover.hubpages.com/literature/Grimms-Fairy-Tales-...
It starts with "There are some fairy tales that are just not meant for kids.".
Some of the pictures by Grimm or illustrators are quite scary, such as the bleeding or weeping out of eyes ... is gross. Possibly these were more for adults, or adults who did not care, such as Pinocchio - perhaps. A puppet that has a growing body part ... that in itself is already super-weird. Are we certain the nose was meant? Is Pinocchio ... a prison item???
- I think there are morals in Grimms Fairy Tales even in the earliest versions. What is striking to me when I read them is that many of the stories come from people at the bottom level of society and reflected their struggle for survival. These include terrifying consequences for misbehavior and that violating group norms (including those imposed from above) is a big no-no. A lot of the stories feature tricksters who cleverly got around these restrictions.
These patterns don't show up clearly in individual stories. But it's pretty strong if you read them from end to end.
- I'm not a huge fan of Walt Disney's versions of fairy tales but in fairness stories like Cinderella were bowdlerized long before the Disney team got hold of them. Disney stories were mostly notable because they were so successful.
For example, in the Grimm Brothers version the stepsisters cut off toes and heels to fit into Cinderella's shoes and ride to visit the prince with blood dripping down on the ground. Later they were blinded. The already old version I read while growing up in the US in the late 1960s left that part out.
More interestingly, the Grimm Brothers themselves altered many of their own stories substantially in the 7 or so full editions of Grimms' Fairy Tales they published before 1857. Some of the originals were pretty crude.
- >It is next to impossible to actively "block" a specific channel on Youtube. I recently tried to do it after noticing #ElsaGate videos popping up in my son's recommended videos, and I just couldn't find anything.
I never heard about #ElsaGate before. There is obviously a pedagogic message in the videos. The main problem seems that leaving the kids unattended watching these videos doesn't work here. Similar to Grimms' Fairy Tales or children stories from Shockheaded Peter. Parents need to read these books to their children in order to give them feedback. I've read some texts by Prof. Dr. Stefan Aufenanger from University of Mainz about this topic.
EDIT: Of course, in order to explain things to kids they need to be in a certain age. The videos seem to be targeted to children in pre-school age.
