Inappropriate book for school??

[pinheadlarry]

Dd (5) teacher gives a book to take home every week
This weeks book was a little disturbing ..

I was reading it , got to the end and my heart skipped a beat

I Dont know if im being dramatic or not, I just blinked and closed the book and dd wasnt paying attention anyway so i dont think she noticed the ending ..

Mr wolf and the 3 bears by Jan Fearnley?

The book starts out normal with Mr wolf and grandma planning a birthday for baby bear
They bake cakes and sandwiches, clean the house the whole shabang

And then..Goldilocks gatecrashes the party eats all the food, ruins pass the parcel and is being rude to everyone

Grandma "smiled and got to her feet slowly" and suggests a game of hide and seek

She "takes a long time" to find everyone and finds everyone except goldilocks??

Everyone is saying how rude goldilocks is for leaving the party

Grandma says never mind and then she says "ive got a surprise"
She goes in to the kitchen and comes back carrying this gigantic GOLDEN pie , where the crust resembles goldilocks curly golden locks..

Mr Wolf says lets gobble it whilst its still hot and Grandma replies
"Not just yet, i think this is a dish best served cold"

As they wait for the pie to cool Grandma wolfs giggling to herself in the background like a psycho
And says " save me a big peice, a very big peice im starving "

On the last page theres recipes from the party and one of them is "grandmas golden pie"
Its giving normal instructions to make and roll the dough and "add filling of your choice"

Beneath that it has a list of grandmas special ingredients
.including things like
cheese and onion
Cayenne pepper
And it says "one naughty girl"
And "one bothersome boy"
Next to it says "oh grandma you dont mean it do you? Do you???"

Keeping in mind nobody wanted goldilocks at the party but grandma wolf insisted that she comes in ..

AIBU to think that they shouldnt be giving out books like that in yr 1?
Its just abit much i think, imagining grandma wolf chopping up goldilocks and stuffing her into a pie .. geesh

Might order this, it sounds good! Better than sodding Biff, Chip and Kipper at least

Sounds fantastic 😆

Go away and read Bluebeard and tell us what you think

Disclaimer - I don't have children - but actually I think the book sounds quite unpleasant. I remember being haunted by that Beatrix Potter one where the rats make the kitten into a pie, but at least the kitten escapes.

I take it that you never sang 3 blind mice to your dc. The real problem is sanitation of the stories, not the stories themselves.

WTF!!!!! No way is that suitable.

Those of you professing that back in the day you had the Grimm stuff, that's because it's all that was available and we were less enlightened. I had the Beatrix Potter series and found Squirrel Nutkin very disquieting.

I am a firm believer in making kids tough and resilient, but exposing them to creepiness and violence at an early age is not the way to do it, especially as the child may read that book on their own, without an adult to mediate the story. I wouldn't let a child watch Arya telling Walder Frey: "They're here my lord" and I wouldn't let them read about it either, which is what this book is.

A lot of the fairy tales we had as children are folk tales, designed for adults to tell around the fire, or based on real events and not suitable for young malleable minds. I've got lots of those at home to read for myself. I only offered my kids the folk tales/Grimm's based stuff when they were old enough.

As soon as I read the OP I knew what kind of comments you are going to get.

So I am making a point to put my comment in for a bit of difference in opinion.

If a kid picked the book in the school library for herself - fine.

For the teacher to choose the book over all the other books for the child - not best judgment imo.

Just because we grew up with these sort of grim stories doesn't mean we should carry on rereading them to our kids. So many better ones have been written since.

It's a mistake to dismiss these kinds of stories as 'grim'.

Humans have used fairytales to work out complex psychology and emotions for millennia.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why this and next generation of young people is screwed. Because their parents don’t thing they can handle a storybook.

Who did he put in it?

Grimm's collected stories were not aimed at children.
They reflected their time and area: constant war, hunger, starvation, children sent out to find work (or die from hunger)
In Hänsel and Gretel the mother was sanitzed to stepmother.

Plus Henry being bricked into the tunnel as punishment after refusing to ruin his paintwork in the rain. He was only released after Gordon broke down and promising to amend his ways.

Grimm's collected stories were not aimed at children.

They've been read to children for centuries along with many other examples like them

Plus Henry being bricked into the tunnel as punishment after refusing to ruin his paintwork in the rain.

Gosh yes, I remember that one 🫣

I think its completely fine if you don't want your child to read it. Different kids are bothered by different things and you know your child best!

But, if you make a fuss with school, they might take it out if circulation which would be a shame for the other kids who would enjoy it.

Maybe you’d like to read this book, @pinheadlarry: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uses_of_Enchantment. It’s a classic.

Use the ambiguous ending to have a conversation about the whole situation. You will find that your DD has lots of interesting thoughts on how Goldilocks behaved and whether the apparent punishment was appropriate. And whether granny was joking.

Ok hear me out PLEASE
Im no pussycat when it comes to gorey fairytales i loved all of the fairy tales you all mentioned growing up, maybe thats why im not offended by them because of familiarity ?
And just in general i watch alot of true crime and horror

But the difference with this book is that its written in a creepy way..

Like the way grandma wolf smiles and giggles after she brutally murders goldilocks and wants a BIG slice of goldilocks pie..

In the old fairytales they are just blunt about the gruesome stuff
They say " hansel pushed the witch in to the fire" not " hansel smiled and giggled as he pushed the old witch in to the fire and then put her in a pie" get where im
Coming from ?

And for background my dd is autistic and shes sensitive about those kind of topics, she thinks very deeply about things and she will talk about it for a whole year probably
She doesnt scare easily, not scared of the dark, wasnt phased when i took her on haunted house ride ..
Just that she already repeats (incessantly) all of the morbid things that she sees in movies/cartoons/books
And shes absorbed a few phrases like " are we going to poison them mum"( snow white)
"Were going to throw them out the window"(matilda)

And i was trying to make her stop saying these things so.she doesnt shout them out on the bus or in the class ..
So this book got swiftly closed and put back into her school bag before she noticed,
she would have figured it out if she was paying attention and then id have a year of dd saying "shall we cook them in a pie mummy !"

These days they censor alot of the classic tales and they get disneyd so i dont think ive ever read dd the grursome ones
Like the 3 little pigs , the wolf never dies in a boiling pot he just runs off
And the mermaid never turns to sea foam
Cinderellas sisters never cut their toes off
Gingerbread man never gets eaten

Id say for some kids, the book in question might be O.K ?
If they dont think about the details
Of grandma wolf tearing goldilocks up and mincing her body into a pie filling..

But i still dont think the school should be provoking these kind of subjects with young kids..
They are the first ones to call your phone when your child says something crazy in class!
They should stick to books about morals and educational content

They should stick to books about morals and educational content

Goodness me that would be a boring list of books.

Look it's not for your daughter, that's fine but that doesn't mean it's not an appropriate book for 99% of the class.

Have we become that sensitive that now even a fairytale causes offence!?

Yes thats true im not going to make a fuss about it

In the old fairytales they are just blunt about the gruesome stuff

Thats not true at all. It depends on what edition you're reading.

Better not read the first one in the series then, Mr Wolf’s Pancakes. That would traumatise you even more.
My kids loved them: well written, excellent illustrations and twisting the narrative.

I think you just need to chalk it up as one of those things. I watched Watership Down (the cartoon) as a child and was upset by it, but I can't say it did any lasting damage or that it was inherently unsuitable for my age group (though it was more graphic than other things I had seen).

This sounds an interesting read thanks for reccomending!

Oh no😂i might for research purposes..

From my memory they werent so descriptive about the gruesome bits .. they didnt linger on it, just sort of said it and moved on