This book will touch on deep and meaningful experiences that you have had while reading as a child and reading to children. By reading those perspectives organized into a series of short essays, you will better be able to read and enjoy the classic tales and bring the most meaning to them for yourself and others. Although I spend a great deal of time thinking about children's literature, this book greatly extended by ability to conceptualize the context for benefiting from these stories.Ms. Yolen begins strongly by pointing out many of the most important distinctions between oral and written literature. Most of our classic children's stories began in the former, and have been migrating into the latter. The story teller plays a great role in the oral tradition, by adjusting the way the story is told to fit the audience. As parents, I think we all do this instinctively with young children, but gradually abdicate that role as the children learn to read silently to themselves. As story tellers, we can help point out the interesting and challenging parts of the stories. In so doing, we increase the likelihood that the child will learn more about what it means to be human.
Many people are concerned because classic folk tales, like Little Red Riding Hood, have many layers of meaning and can be interpreted in some pretty fightening ways. Ms. Yolen cites research showing that children actually like the punishments to be extreme in such stories, as a reflection of their sense of justice. But when should we be able to treat the outsider harshly? Stories like Rumplestiltskin nicely raise that issue. Whenever I review children's books, I try to point out these opportunities for exploring moral issues. One of the strengths of the folk tales is that they are full of moral issues, and questions of choice. For example, even when you take on the powers of magic, there is often a price to be paid.
At another level, these stories capture parts of ourselves. By focusing in an imaginary world, they allow us to concentrate on that little sliver of ourselves. For example, anyone reading Peter Pan will remember sometimes feeling like Wendy and wanting to grow up, and sometimes feeling like Peter Pan and never wanting to grow up. By being poised with a choice on that ambivalence, a person can make a more successful determination about growing up and in what ways. No child would sit still for such a discussion without Barrie's powerful story.
I was also impressed by the argument that we have many concepts that adults do not usually discuss in public company, like death, good, evil, God, and love. The folk and fairy tales are full of such subjects, and the "disbelief" that we suspend helps make us comfortable with dealing in these semi-taboo subjects.
One of the best arguments in the essays is that by going through Alice's Looking Glass these stories must be very true about human nature, or we will reject them. They will simply be too remote and disconnected otherwise. So the more absurd the setting, the higher the potential for touching the universal.
Naturally, there are things that are regrettable in these stories . . . but there are things that are regrettable in life. Moral conversation and discussion will always benefit from an early beginning in life. How will your children find out what you believe, if you do not use stories of all sorts as one context for explaining your ideas and experiences?
I also agree with the praise here for the time travel books that allow us to more realistically consider earlier times. Now that people study so much less history, there is an increasing tendency to assume the past was much like the present. That has never been less true than now, as our knowledge and technology advance so rapidly.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument of all is that these stories give us common metaphors for communicating with one another. In the absence of the Cinderella story, how can children deal with their universal secret suspicion that they were really born to royalty . . . not their own parents . . . and are fated for a great destiny? Having read many versions of Cinderella, as well as having seen the Walt Disney movie, I as shocked when I realized how impoverished this story would be if you had only seen the Walt Disney version. Then, having been shocked, I also remembered thinking how weak I thought the Walt Disney version was the first time I saw it as a youngster. That took me back to an age of consciousness where I had not been for many years. I was grateful for the experience.
After you finish reading this book and considering its many important messages, I suggest that you also read The Golden Bough, which looks at legends and folklore around the world over time. From that perspective, you will begin to appreciate how common our yearnings and intrepretations are of common life issues and circumstances. It makes me feel closer to every other person when that thought resonates throughout my body while reading that outstanding book, like the reverbrations from an enhanting chanson performed by a troubador's medieval song and lute.
May you touch others, and yourself, better through the most universal human stories from the oral tradition! Also, read aloud daily to your children and grandchildren. If you cannot be with them, you can still do this by telephone.
