10 Reasons Why Kids Need to Read Non-Disney Fairy Tales
by Melissa Taylor

Say “fairy tales” and your mind likely flashes to Disney and its animated versions of children’s classics. But old-school fairy tales — stories by authors such as Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde, Sophie, Comtesse de Ségur, or Andrew Lang — are filled with a richness and complexity that is often missing from their big-screen renderings. Here are ten reasons it’s worth reading the original stories with your young reader.

1. Life Lessons
Remember the line from The Princess Bride: “I do not think it means what you think it means”? Many of the moral lessons in the original stories are quite different from the Disney versions. Hans Christian Andersen didn’t write “The Little Mermaid” to teach us how to marry a prince, but to warn us that our actions have consequences. As Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller explained, “Deeper meaning resides in the fairytales told me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life.”

2. Hope
Many fairy tales offer hope — hope of redemption, hope that good can conquer evil, hope that our enemies will be vanquished. G.K. Chesterton said it best, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

3. Shared Mythology
When kids know a familiar canon of stories — such as “Goldilocks and The Three Bears” or “Rapunzel” — they have a shared foundation, a common mythology. From an educator’s perspective, this is invaluable.

What’s more, this background knowledge helps us to have a richer, more fulfilling literary experience. For example, last year my kids and I read several books about fairy tale lands (The Land of Stories, Ever After High, and Storybound). To fully enjoy each of these books, we needed knowledge of the original fairy tale stories that they reference.

4. What's Possible
Fairy tales expand our idea of what’s possible in this world. The stories add fairies, magicians, giants, and trolls to our ordinary world, pushing our imaginations to soar with notions of “What if ___ were real or would happen?” And even though we know these stories aren’t really true, we still like to believe they are.

5. Cultural Appreciation
There’s nothing like reading Arabian Nights stories, Norse mythology, or African folk tales to give children an introduction to a particular culture. Especially with stories that are similar to each other, such as “Lon Po Po” and “Red Riding Hood,” which each bear the uniqueness of the narrator’s culture and traditions.

6. Short Stories
Fairy tales don’t require hours of reading. Their length is an attractive feature for children in general and reluctant readers in particular. Open an anthology and pick one or two stories without reading cover to cover.

7. Scary in a Safe Context
Fairy tales allow kids to learn how to deal with scary situations. As readers, we put ourselves into the stories. But since they’re stories, we don’t have to experience the scary firsthand. Instead, we see how the characters face their fears and we learn from their experiences.

8. Hard Truths
Like life, many fairy tales don’t have happy endings. Bad things do happen. Read the stories with your kids and talk about them. C. S. Lewis believed that “sometimes fairy stories say best what needs to be said.” After reading, ask your kids, “Is the story telling you a truth about the world?”

9. Gateway to Fantasy
Fairy tales introduce children to the genre of fantasy. In fact, fairy tales are beloved by many fantasy authors, like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Fairy tales whet kids’ appetites for magic and pave the road for more reading about fantasy worlds.

10. Princesses Don't Have a Dress Code
It’s important to remember that Disney isn’t the authority on fairy tales. Read the great fairy tale authors to see for yourself. Discover princesses who aren’t dressed in the requisite pink, blue, or yellow. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even find that you like troll princesses better than Cinderella.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales.”–Albert Einstein

The fam and I watched Maleficient this evening.  

Anyone else see that thing?  

Visually stunning.  I found it to be absolutely scrumptious to watch.  But I swear, I couldn't think of any better way to cram the Mother-Earth-Female-Power-Men-Are-Evil propaganda into kid's minds.  Watching Angelina fly around in that movie made me think of a flying squealing vagina.  

It'll be just as forgettable as Snow White and the Huntsman.

Quote from: Traditional Guy 20

Ah I see the author of this piece has no problem mentioning Albert Einstein or the greatness of African folk tales. :rolleyes:

In all honesty I agree that Disney is not the best to get fairy tales, although I think Snow White and Pinnochio are good animated movies. I think stories like Cinderella and Heidi are best to know, not because of the tale itself but of the lesson it can teach you.

Is there something wrong with African folk tales?  Or does black just straight up equal evil in your world?

African folk tales would glorify animism, revenge and envy, and probably even cannibalism.  At the least and most harmless, it would present a non-Catholic worldview.  Children will be fed enough of that dung in the public schools as it is.  No need for Catholic parents to increase the swill.

Okay.  Occasionally, against my better judgment, i come back here to see how things are going.  Posts like this remind me of why I decided I had better things to do.

Is there something wrong with African folk tales?  Or does black just straight up equal evil in your world?

The problem with "multiculturalism" is that it teaches that Europe is equal to Africa.

That is false.

Besides the obvious violation of common sense (just look at pictures of each), Europe is better than Africa in other ways as well. Europe became the headquarters of Christendom, and was a Catholic continent with Catholic culture for centuries.

Rome -- the headquarters of Christ's own Church -- is in Europe.

Europe colonized the New World, as well many other places, including Africa. So to put them on the same level is foolish.

Africa still doesn't have any "Catholic countries", though there are lots of converts there now, thanks to the evangelization of European missionaries.

God seems to have had special plans for the Europeans. I'm sure He will judge them differently as well... "To him that has been given much, much shall be expected."

Europe has completely apostatized now, but that's another story. Still, much of the culture still has a Catholic or residual Catholic bent to it. Europe is frankly reverting to paganism (actually, an explicitly Christ-denying paganism which is much worse!), and it will pay for this apostasy by "enjoying" the full fruits of paganism (war, famine, fear, terror, death, and all manner of sufferings).

Quote from: Sigismund

Is there something wrong with African folk tales?  Or does black just straight up equal evil in your world?

The problem with "multiculturalism" is that it teaches that Europe is equal to Africa.

That is false.

Plainly spoken.  Thank you.    :applause:

Quote from: Sigismund

Okay.  Occasionally, against my better judgment, i come back here to see how things are going.  Posts like this remind me of why I decided I had better things to do.

Perhaps you do have better things to do but, pray tell, what exactly do you disagree with?

Don't hold your breath waiting for an answer; he's long gone. There are SPLC, NAACP and ADL newsletters to be read, you know.

He's like so many other hopeless cases who came of age in the 60's. The "Civil Rights" sham was just all so new and exciting - all the cool kids were doing it, after all. They had their pampered baby boomer rebellion against their parents justified for them by college professors who, preaching from the American Jєωιѕн Committe's agitprop bible The Authoritarian Principle, told them that their parents were just a bunch of racists and petty fascists like Archie Bunker on the TV, and they ate it up. They saw Martin Luther King not as the philandering, rabble rousing communist stooge that he was, but as the untouchably sacred saint and martyr that the foot soldiers of the NWO fashioned him into (supplanting the "hateful," "racist' saints of old like Chrysostom and Pius V).

This garbage was in the music they listened to, the lectures they sat throught, the television shows and movies they watched; in the very air they breathed and water they drank. I should know, nearly all of my aunts and uncles (and my parents-in-law) fit this pathetic, real-life trope to a T - even the ones who call themselves "conservative." Any attempt to challenge them to look at the canonical (Jєωιѕн) American racial narrative with a critical eye causes them to squirm in discomfort.

"What do you mean African culture isn't equal to European culture?" "So what if the NAACP was founded by and exclusively run for decades by Jєωs? Are you anti-semitic?" "How dare you use words like 'animals' and 'savages' to describe those people in Ferguson and Baltimore! It's one thing to use those words for white people who misbehave, but these people have had to live with the painful legacy of slavery, which terms like that as well as the - gulp - n-word - only serve to exacerbate!" Blah blah blah. You could set your watch to these stupid outbursts.

So it's best not to waste one's breath trying to reason with those of this ilk, because they seem to be quite impervious to reason. They've internalized the commands of their oppressors so totally, it's in their very marrow. They have nothing to offer those who rationally deconstruct their liberal weltanschauung other than weepy false compassion; phony, sanctimonious indignation; and decades-old libtard talking points and protest march slogans. They're every bit as "reactionary" as they accused their parents' generation of being back in the 60's.

where can I  get a good source for kid books to counter act the need for these fairy tale dinsey books, religious books I have.

CF,  there is no need for Disney books. Avoid Disney completely. Go for the original writers, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, you can order through the link on the home page and Matthew will get his bit.

Do a web search for "original fairy tales book". Once you have an idea of who to select, you can also search in 2nd hand book stores.