A British website surveyed 3,000 parents to find out what mom and dad are reading to their children before bed. It turns out one-fourth of “mums” have put aside dark, scary and non-PC traditional tales like Snow White and Rapunzel in favor of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Gruffalo. According to TheBabyWebsite.com:
- Snow White seems to have fallen by the wayside because the Wicked Witch was deemed too frightening – but a handful won’t read it because they feel the dwarf reference is not PC.
- Rapunzel is considered ‘too dark’ and Cinderella has been dumped because she is forced to do the housework and sit on cinders.
- A third of parents won’t read ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ because she walks alone through woods and finds her grandmother has been eaten by a wolf.
- A fifth of parents don’t like to tell their children about ‘The Gingerbread Man’ as he gets eaten by a fox.
However two out of three parents in the survey believe “traditional fairy tales have stronger morality messages than many of today’s popular bedtime stories.” They’re just too scary to read before bed.
The top ten bedtime stories of 2008 were The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Mr Men by Roger Hargreaves, The Gruffalo, Winnie the Pooh, Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort, Thomas and Friends from The Railway Series, The Wind in the Willows, What a Noisy Pinky Ponk! by Andrew Davenport, Charlie and Lola by Lauren Child and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
The site also offers a list of top ten most neglected fairytales. It includes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk.
Speaking as a former toddler, some of those stories were too dark 50 years ago.
The one I particularly hated was Hansel and Gretel, and I hated that we did it as a class play in first grade. I found Snow White pretty disturbing too, and it did leave me rather frightened of old women for a while. And though it wasn’t a fairly tale, I was really upset by the Barbar story where the old Elephant King dies from eating poisonous mushrooms.
So for me, it’s not about PC or not PC. I just don’t have any great desire to share stories I hated with my child — there are enough ones I loved, and many new ones.
It’s been interesting to me as an adult to read the original Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault versions of fairy tales because they really are significantly more violent than the re-tellings I grew up with in the ’80’s.
What I’ve personally chosen to do with my own kids is to read the sanitized versions aloud to them when they’re little and save the original versions for independent reading when they’re more mature. I do think the originals have merit, but they’re too dark for very young kids IMHO.
I think there is a difference between the headline and the story in this article. I don’t think the classic fairy tales are too dark; I started reading them to my daughter when she was about two and a half, and we have discussed them in increasing depth as she has grown (she’s now six). I think there are many good lessons to be learned in them. But I would never use them for bedtime! And I read them from children’s anthologies in English and Italian, not the originals. Not sure if we’re ready yet for those birds telling the prince in Cinderella, “Turn and peep, turn and peep, there’s blood within the shoe…”