Are fairy tales too gruesome?

[elleroses]

My five-year-old recently started reading and I thought it would be lovely to share with her some of the stories I was read as a child, so I pulled out some old tomes of Hans Andersen and Brothers Grimm.

Only problem is I read some of them before sharing them with my daughter and a few of the stories are far worse than I seem to remember, for example The Red Shoes involves a little girl who is forced to cut her own feet off when her shoes won't stop dancing and little red riding hood apparently has undertones of sexism etc.

I seem to have turned out ok and I don't remember ever being shocked by these gory details and was just wondering if I could ask some other opinions as to whether I should expose my little girl to these classic fairy tales or not?

Some can be really quite gruesome and terrifying. They often have morals hidden in amongst them. Red Riding Hood always scared me and the Tinder Box. Some are a little more light hearted and appropriate for a five year old.

My Dad always read to me as a LO, so he tried to stop or end at a happy conclusion, or at least make up a happily ever after ending. Thumbelina was one I liked.

It might be worth having a look at your library to see if there is a collection with the ones that are tweaked for a younger audience.

Fairytales are great and yes, gruesome. They're based on some fairly icky folk tales. I always embellish them when retelling to DD.

There are some great tales here surlalune fairy tales and a little bit about the more gruesome aspects here

The first fairytale I told DD was "This little piggy went to market. The End."

Thank you! Embellishing is a great idea, but do you think that it might be good to let children know that the world isn't all lovely and nice all the time? I really can't decide if I want to censor them or not :s

Yep, many of the Grimm Brothers and Hans Andersen stories are gruesome. Even Cinderella has been sanitised where the original ending involves crows pecking eyes out of the ugly sister. Little Mermaid gets her tongue cut off when she gives her voice to the with etc.

I suppose you could just read the child friendly versions while your dd is still young. My dd is 4 and she can cope with Wild Swans and The Snow Queen both which involve the heroine sacrificing to save loved ones.

I would not read the Red Shoes or something like Little Claus Big Claus to my child and she didn't like the Tinderbox either which involves blackmailing and decapitating a witch. You need to be selective I suppose and decide whether your child is mature enough to handle it.

elleroses I embellish the tales to make them more modern or more gruesome. Children love a bit of safe blood and gore. In one version of the Three Little Pigs, I have the third pig as sensible, investing wisely and becoming a property magnate with enough money to take out a contract on the big bad wolf. The wolf ends up as a very nice fur coat.

I'm currently trying to think of a way to make the Princess in "The Princess and the Pea" more modern and less drippy.

Yes they can be gruesome, I tend to not censor exactly but read them the less horrid versions until they can read for themselves and then self-censor if they want to. So, for example my 31/2 year old has had all the classic Cinderellas Snow White etc mainly told via the medium of Disney and very sanitised adaptation up to now, but we have just started on The Golden Fairy Book which is based on translations from the original French tales (pre-Grimm) while my 61/2 year old free reader is reading all sorts including books of Norse myths, collected folk tales by Alan Garner and Indian folk tales. All of which contain some fairly gruesome elements. Barefoot Books also do some lovely ones. The whole subject of fairy tales is so interesting, I have become slightly obsessed with it and ramble on at length on my blog www.jongleuse.blogspot.com

I agree. DS (4) brought home Little Red Riding Hood from school. Of course I know the basic story but I did ummm a bit where it read that the woodsman (?) cut open the wolf with an axe to retrieve her and Granny.