She doesn’t want to read the little stories anymore.
Those old standbys — the ones about the owls, the bunnies, the little pea — they have been tossed aside. Now, in their place, she prefers the stories with fewer pictures. More words. The stories with pages that bend. The ones that require various voices from Mama.
“I want to read that one,” she says. “Bedtime stories.”
That just happens to be the name of this particular Little Golden Book.
“OK,” I say, sidling up to the little toddler bed that used to be a new crib just three years ago.
She is tucked in for the night, cozy in her PJs and hair damp from the bath. Her breath smells like bubblegum toothpaste. She leans in and gently pets my hair as I read the first story: Chicken Little.
Silly Henny Penny, thinking the sky is falling! All her poultry pals soon believe it, too. They’re off to tell the king. Along the way they meet Foxy Loxy, who slyly pulls aside the birds one by one … to eat them.
I glance at my daughter, who is hearing violent fairy tales for the first time. Will she be traumatized? Will she have nightmares? Should I stop reading?
“Keep reading, Mama,” she says. “More stories.”
OK, then. And so I read. I read Goldilocks.
A little girl essentially pulls off a dine-and-dash on a bear family, and they’re left with no porridge, broken chairs, and crumpled beds. The injustice! Somebody’s been sleeping in my bed, and she’s going to get away with it because she’s a pretty little girl who can run fast.
My daughter is enthralled, but maybe because I make the Little Bear talk realllly realllly high, and high voices make everything better.
Unfortunately, my high voices can’t keep two of the Three Little Pigs from getting eaten alive by the Big Bad Wolf, who has abnormally strong breath, huffing and puffing till he blows down a house made of wood. It’s OK, though, because the third pig exacts revenge by boiling the wolf in a stew that presumably he will eat later. (Animals are hungry.)
In our book’s version of Red Riding Hood, her grandmother locks herself in the closet to hide from the wolf, and doesn’t come out until the Hunstman shoots the wolf. I guess she was OK with her granddaughter being bait. (Apparently there are versions in which both the grandmother and Red Riding Hood get eaten, and in some ways I would prefer that to knowing that a grandmother wouldn’t protect her granddaughter.)
Finally, the arrogant Gingerbread Man can outrun everyone he encounters except the wolf, who of course tricks him into a death trap. By the time I get to the last line about how all Gingerbread Men should be eaten, my daughter is drifting off to sleep.
I kiss her in hopes that she has sweet dreams. Dreams that are free of carnivorous wolves, sly foxes and thieves.
The following night she’ll ask to read more fables and fairy tales. And I’ll oblige.
It makes me wonder: Why do we love fairy tales and fables? Why does my 3-year-old daughter, who has heard none of these stories previously, seem enraptured in a primal way? Why have these violent fairy tales endured the test of time? Are the messages still important/true? What do you think?
