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Dec. 12th, 2004 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerOn Friday, I took the girls and met up with the mothers of two of Molly's friends and their girls (we had five little girls between us). We took the train downtown and went to Daytons (officially Marshall Fields now, sigh) to see their Christmas display. For years, Daytons has done a Christmas display on their 8th floor with detailed animated characters. It's usually a fairy tale or something, not anything explicitly Christmas related. I've never gone to see it before. This was a Friday and late morning, and there was a long line, though it moved pretty quickly. I'm glad we went with friends, because normally Molly will complain a fair amount if she has to wait for anything; she, Rose, and Marin did a pretty good job of entertaining each other while we waited in line.
Kiera was a handful. I need to get a toddler leash, I think (or, as they are apparently called by the stores that sell them, a safety harness). She doesn't like riding in the stroller and will cry to get out. But if I let her out, she is squirmy, determined, and shockingly fast. If she gets away from me in a crowded environment (like, say, a downtown department store) I realize very quickly that a two-foot-tall person can move through a crowd in a way that an adult can't. I alternated between keeping her in the stroller and letting her out to ride on my shoulders or be carried in my arms. Anyway, it's possible that if I'd had a leash, she'd have thrown just as much of a fit when she realized that she couldn't climb up the display even once she escaped my arms. I'd like to at least offer her the additional freedom, though. I hate making her sit in the stroller when she so strongly wants to walk. She's a good walker. Last Wednesday she not only walked almost the whole way to Molly's preschool, she insisted on carrying Molly's lunch box the whole way. (It's a three-block walk.)
The display this year is a depiction of the fairy tale Snow White. Molly, Marin and Rose all seemed to really like it. We finished off with a trip to McDonalds ("the Evil Arches," one of the other moms called it) and then took the train home.
Once we were home, I asked Molly if she wanted to hear the story of Snow White again, and she said yes.
And here some fun begins.
I'm a fantasy writer, so I'm sure it won't shock you to hear that I loved fairy tales as a child. I've used them for material as an adult writer -- I wrote a retelling of The Snow Queen that was published in Realms of Fantasy. Starting as an older child, I relished finding the authentic versions, complete with authentic blood and gore. I scorned the prettied-up bowdlerized versions and I especially scorned the Disney versions. (THE MERMAID DIES, dammit.) Of course, I read those as an older child. I'm pretty sure that if my parents were reading me fairy tales when I was four, they were reading me versions that had, at the very least, been toned down.
Molly is four.
Still, we've got quite a lot of books of fairy tales around, so I figured one of them would have a reasonably toned-down version of Snow White.
I started with our big illustrated book of Children's Stories. This is a childhood book of Ed's and seems to be part of a set that also includes a book of nursery rhymes. I discovered once that in the introduction they go out of their way to assure the parents that NOTHING in ANY of these stories should be disturbing to a child in any way. So really, it wasn't surprising that Snow White wasn't in there. Even if you gloss over the real mother dying, omit the whole business with eating the heart, and leave out the red-hot shoes (in the original version of Snow White, the wicked Queen is punished at the end by being forced to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dies), it's tough to avoid the whole poisoned apple business. (The book does have some excellent classic stories, like the Bremen Town Musicians. You can avoid being disturbing to children while still telling excellent stories.)
I moved on to another classic edition of fairy tales. Red hot shoes? Check. Eating the heart? Check. Copious quantities of ten-dollar words? Check. Next! I tried My Bookhouse Books. These were books I had as a child -- my great-grandmother had bought them for my grandmother when she was a child, and they were handed down to us. These were heavy, beautiful books, printed on paper that had unfortunately become rather brittle. I used to sit behind the wing chair in the living room, right by the heat vent, and read these books for hours. My parents were kind enough to stick a reading light back there for me. The Bookhouse Books are designed to grow with the kid -- the first book is nursery rhymes and very short, simple stories, and they get longer and more difficult as the books progress. (There are more recent editions, but I don't like any of them as much as the ones from the 1920s that I grew up with.) The final book in the series has an index, conveniently enough, and I was able to determine that the books had "Snow White and Rose Red" but not "Snow White."
The next book I tried was actually a collection for adults. This one had the gruesome material but not the florid language, at least, so I read it to Molly, but I confess, I changed the ending: I said that when the wicked queen was invited to the wedding, she was so angry that she fell down dead. I think Molly suspected that I'd left something out.
Fairy tales were not really intended as stories for children -- at least not all of them were. So why read them to a four-year-old at all? Well, these days, they are part of the canon of children's literature. A culturally literate child is familiar with these stories from an early age. And I'd like Molly to be exposed to something akin to the real versions of the stories before she encounters the Disney versions -- at least some of the stories, with some of the original darkness (even if I leave out the red-hot shoes). The Bookhouse Books had a lovely version of Cinderella, which included the pumpkin transformed into a coach (Molly loves pumpkins) and the glass slipper left behind at midnight, but omits the stepsisters carving off bits of their own feet, or the birds pecking out their eyes. (Instead, the stepsisters resolve to be nicer people from now on.)
Anyway. I need to take the time to track down a decent edition of fairy tales for Molly. Illustrated nicely; toned down but not stripped bare; language that is melodic but not archaic. Maybe I should try going to one of the excellent children's bookstores in the area and explaining what I want, to see what they suggest.
I don't think Molly liked the book version of Snow White; she hasn't asked for it again. I'm not sure if she was put off by the words she didn't understand, the gruesome stuff, or the lack of pictures.
Kiera was a handful. I need to get a toddler leash, I think (or, as they are apparently called by the stores that sell them, a safety harness). She doesn't like riding in the stroller and will cry to get out. But if I let her out, she is squirmy, determined, and shockingly fast. If she gets away from me in a crowded environment (like, say, a downtown department store) I realize very quickly that a two-foot-tall person can move through a crowd in a way that an adult can't. I alternated between keeping her in the stroller and letting her out to ride on my shoulders or be carried in my arms. Anyway, it's possible that if I'd had a leash, she'd have thrown just as much of a fit when she realized that she couldn't climb up the display even once she escaped my arms. I'd like to at least offer her the additional freedom, though. I hate making her sit in the stroller when she so strongly wants to walk. She's a good walker. Last Wednesday she not only walked almost the whole way to Molly's preschool, she insisted on carrying Molly's lunch box the whole way. (It's a three-block walk.)
The display this year is a depiction of the fairy tale Snow White. Molly, Marin and Rose all seemed to really like it. We finished off with a trip to McDonalds ("the Evil Arches," one of the other moms called it) and then took the train home.
Once we were home, I asked Molly if she wanted to hear the story of Snow White again, and she said yes.
And here some fun begins.
I'm a fantasy writer, so I'm sure it won't shock you to hear that I loved fairy tales as a child. I've used them for material as an adult writer -- I wrote a retelling of The Snow Queen that was published in Realms of Fantasy. Starting as an older child, I relished finding the authentic versions, complete with authentic blood and gore. I scorned the prettied-up bowdlerized versions and I especially scorned the Disney versions. (THE MERMAID DIES, dammit.) Of course, I read those as an older child. I'm pretty sure that if my parents were reading me fairy tales when I was four, they were reading me versions that had, at the very least, been toned down.
Molly is four.
Still, we've got quite a lot of books of fairy tales around, so I figured one of them would have a reasonably toned-down version of Snow White.
I started with our big illustrated book of Children's Stories. This is a childhood book of Ed's and seems to be part of a set that also includes a book of nursery rhymes. I discovered once that in the introduction they go out of their way to assure the parents that NOTHING in ANY of these stories should be disturbing to a child in any way. So really, it wasn't surprising that Snow White wasn't in there. Even if you gloss over the real mother dying, omit the whole business with eating the heart, and leave out the red-hot shoes (in the original version of Snow White, the wicked Queen is punished at the end by being forced to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dies), it's tough to avoid the whole poisoned apple business. (The book does have some excellent classic stories, like the Bremen Town Musicians. You can avoid being disturbing to children while still telling excellent stories.)
I moved on to another classic edition of fairy tales. Red hot shoes? Check. Eating the heart? Check. Copious quantities of ten-dollar words? Check. Next! I tried My Bookhouse Books. These were books I had as a child -- my great-grandmother had bought them for my grandmother when she was a child, and they were handed down to us. These were heavy, beautiful books, printed on paper that had unfortunately become rather brittle. I used to sit behind the wing chair in the living room, right by the heat vent, and read these books for hours. My parents were kind enough to stick a reading light back there for me. The Bookhouse Books are designed to grow with the kid -- the first book is nursery rhymes and very short, simple stories, and they get longer and more difficult as the books progress. (There are more recent editions, but I don't like any of them as much as the ones from the 1920s that I grew up with.) The final book in the series has an index, conveniently enough, and I was able to determine that the books had "Snow White and Rose Red" but not "Snow White."
The next book I tried was actually a collection for adults. This one had the gruesome material but not the florid language, at least, so I read it to Molly, but I confess, I changed the ending: I said that when the wicked queen was invited to the wedding, she was so angry that she fell down dead. I think Molly suspected that I'd left something out.
Fairy tales were not really intended as stories for children -- at least not all of them were. So why read them to a four-year-old at all? Well, these days, they are part of the canon of children's literature. A culturally literate child is familiar with these stories from an early age. And I'd like Molly to be exposed to something akin to the real versions of the stories before she encounters the Disney versions -- at least some of the stories, with some of the original darkness (even if I leave out the red-hot shoes). The Bookhouse Books had a lovely version of Cinderella, which included the pumpkin transformed into a coach (Molly loves pumpkins) and the glass slipper left behind at midnight, but omits the stepsisters carving off bits of their own feet, or the birds pecking out their eyes. (Instead, the stepsisters resolve to be nicer people from now on.)
Anyway. I need to take the time to track down a decent edition of fairy tales for Molly. Illustrated nicely; toned down but not stripped bare; language that is melodic but not archaic. Maybe I should try going to one of the excellent children's bookstores in the area and explaining what I want, to see what they suggest.
I don't think Molly liked the book version of Snow White; she hasn't asked for it again. I'm not sure if she was put off by the words she didn't understand, the gruesome stuff, or the lack of pictures.
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Fairy Tales and Kids Books
Date: 2004-12-12 03:00 pm (UTC)The kids bookstore I went to was Wild Rumpus Books, over in Linden Hills (near Lake Harriet). It's probably a little bit of a trek for you, but it's a neat store. It has a little, kid size door inside their main door for kids to go through, and they have a lot of birds in cages (finches, cockatiels, parakeets, and doves) and a chicken not in a cage wandering around the bookstore. I think it's bigger than Red Balloon books, and like them the employees are really helpful about recommendations.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-13 10:16 pm (UTC)Fairy Tales told by Berlie Doherty and illustrated by Jane Ray is utterly gorgeous, with lush, stylized art and not a huge amount of text. But all the bloody bits are left in, for both Snow White and Cinderella, though none of the other tales have as much inherent violence. Still, if you can find a copy to look through at some point, it might be a good collection when Molly's a bit older. (ah, Amazon suggests ages 9-12)
The other is Favorite tales from Grimm illustrated by Mercer Mayer and retold by Nancy Garden. This has the "cleaner" stories but far more text than pictures (more a book with pictures than an illustrated book), so I'm not really sure what reading level it'd be at. Still, the pictures are worth it, as Mayer has done some of my favorite-ever fairy tale illustration. Though it may be out of print, now that I think about it.
Ohoh, two others which I don't have handy right now, but probably fit the bill more properly: The Golden Book of Fairy Tales and The Snow Queen and Other Tales, translated by Marie Ponsot, illustrated by Adrienne Segur. These were both spectacular editions, both oversized and richly illustrated, and listed as age appropriate (4-8) by Amazon. Definitely give these a look if at all possible.
Good luck in your search!
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Date: 2004-12-14 06:46 am (UTC)