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

Don't read the Gingerbread man then.

Or the Pied piper.

Or the Gruffalo.

Or the Twits.

Or anything.

I still remember a child's programme from when I was little about a dolls house and one of the characters burned to death. Yes, burned to death. When the dolls House caught fire.

I just chuckled. My kids would have loved that.

Plenty of death and violence in traditional children's stories. Important not to get drawn into censoring.

Don’t let your child get hold of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes then, with incidents of pigs being made into suitcases!

It's a brilliant picture book from a brilliant author from a brilliant series.

It's fine. Most classic children's stories/fairy tales are fairly macabre and have gruesome parts.

I was managing to empathise with you until this:

They should stick to books about morals and educational content

Seriously, that would mean dispensing with 95% of picture books, surely?

Its the same curls that goldilocks has in the books
It looks like a wig has been stretched over the pie

You can keep all the books minus the weird stuff
This story could have had different ending to teach a lesson about etiquette and manners
Instead they just killed goldilocks because she was "bad", not a good message for kids

Every single fairy tale has been refashioned in recent times to teach a moral lesson
Those are the versions that should be in schools
Im just saying they should leave out violent content, instead of teaching kids that its "hilarious" to kill and eat someone
Ive seen alot of that in cartoons too where violence is turned into comedy

YABU and ridiculous. It's Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

No its not
its mr wolf and the three bears plus killer grandma

Oh gosh yes - the little match girl. That broke my heart. Still makes me sad to think about. I think that type of story has much more of an impact because it seems to true to life and is something you can see happening.

YABU, it sounds like a standard fairy tale! Have you never read any of the Grimms fairytales?

Your heart skipped a beat? What when the wicked stepsisters amputate their toes with pliers so that they try to get their big feet into Cinderella´s crystal slippers?
That´s what the olde worlde stories where like. WE loved them, my uncle used to make them the creepiest the better. We are all more or less well balanced as adults...

A book can explore moral or ethical issues without being didactic (and probably a bit hectoring).

This one does exactly that. It’s ambiguous. So you can have a conversation about what could have happened and what the morals might be.

books that just lecture readers on ‘the right thing to do’ are far less engaging and less effective in most situations.

It really doesn’t look like a wig has been stretched across the pie in any meaningful sense. That’s just hyperbolic. It looks like cartoony pastry, with similarities to the girl’s hair.

This story could have had different ending to teach a lesson about etiquette and manners. Instead they just killed goldilocks because she was "bad", not a good message for kids

by your own description though, this isn’t an accurate description of the plot.

It’s ambiguous. They might have killed her. They might not have.

In either case, it isn’t clear which of the characters are ‘good’ and which are ‘bad’ anyway. That’s part of the value. It encourages discussion.

I can imagine the version of the book that ends with a nice, clear lesson on etiquette and manners would not be popular. Nor would it get anyone thinking.

There are enough boring books that lecture children out there.

But it sounds like your DD is not traumatised or upset by the content of such books, she enjoys them.

It is YOU who is upset at dealing with the things your DD repeats - and surely that is simply part of parenting.

So you want to avoid vital elements of her education at least when it comes to reading comprehension plus all the other things these stories raise... to, what, make your life a bit easier so she doesn't embarrass you in the supermarket or in front of Grandparents?

I read a norwegian folk story buttercup to my 5 year old.

The witches daughter get her head chopped off and is made into a soup. Her parents eat the soup commenting how tasty it is.

She loves it.

I think at that age they enjoy the more gory stories.

I didnt avoid it i just dont like the book selection ..
No i dont want to be embarrassed by my dd shouting those things

Fair point..

Came here to say the same thing. Roald Dahls revolting rhymes springs to mind! Your heart skipped a beat?

Yes to everyone i did read grimms and all the classics but i dont reead the x rated versions to my dd
Thanks for all of the different opinions you gave me some new perspective

Have you read any other fairy tales recently?! 🤣

My DD6 brought home Chicken Licken last year... Which I'd actually never read before... So I was as shocked as she was at the ending.. She couldn't stop laughing at my reaction 😂

It sounds very similar to 'there's a hair in my dirt' by Gary Larson.