RAR #243: Why Read Fairy Tales?

Sarah Mackenzie (00:05): Hey, hey. Welcome to the Read Aloud Revival, the show that helps you make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books. I'm your host, Sarah Mackenzie. (00:19): Fairytales. Just the mention of them brings to mind images of enchanted forests and talking animals, daring heroes and wicked villains. They're the stories that form so many of our childhoods, but these stories are more than just whimsical tales for children. They hold deep significance and they offer profound insights into the human experience, and into our spiritual lives. Today I want to talk about why they're some of the best stories to read and why they're worth sharing with our kids. I also want to share a brand new fairytale book list we've put together for you. Actually, I'll just give it to you now. Why make you wait till later in the episode? Text the word fairytale, all one word, to the number 33777, and I'll send you our brand new fairytale book list. You can also get it for yourself by going to the show notes at readaloudrevival.com/243. Okay, let's talk fairytales. (01:41): What is a fairytale and what makes a fairytale different from a classic story? Well, my friend Pam Barnhill interviewed Angelina Stanford, an expert on fairytales, on the Your Morning Basket podcast. I'm going to put a link to that full episode in the show notes. It is definitely worth a listen. It is Your Morning Basket, episode 41, and in the episode, Angelina describes fairytales as wonder stories. That's actually the German word that the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm used when they were making their collection. They called it a collection of wonder stories. What do we know about fairytales? Most fairytales don't actually have fairies in them. It's just a word we use to categorize this kind of wonder story. This kind of wonder story follows a fairytale structure. It has a certain form, usually it involves magic and always it has a happy ending. (02:43): Actually, they have to have a happy ending in order to truly be a fairytale, in contrast to a cautionary tale. So you might be thinking, "Wait, I've read fairytales that don't have happy endings." (02:56): Sometimes, for example, you might read a version of Little Red Riding Hood, and it ends with a happy ending. The wood cutter kills the Wolf, and saves Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, right? That's the Grimm's version. The villain is defeated and the hero is saved. That's a happy ending, but you may have read a version of Little Red Riding Hood where Little Red Riding Hood was not saved by the wood cutter, where she dies at the end. What's up with that? Well, fairytales are retold all the time, and a particular reteller, probably the most famous, was a French man named Charles Perot, and he rewrote fairytales with dire endings to turn them into cautionary tales. (03:42): So he took a story like Little Red Riding Hood, and he basically wanted to make a moralistic tale or a lesson, and so if you don't do the right thing, bad things will happen to you. That's basically what he was doing with his stories, right? So Little Red Riding Hood didn't obey and she made bad decisions, and she died. If you engage with the wolf, you're going to die. So stories where the endings are not happy endings, they're not fairytales anymore, they're cautionary tales. And I have found that my kids are just not as I by those, and I think it as to why, because the redemptive nature, the truth of the story has actually stripped out of them when they're turned into a cautionary tale. What do I mean by redemptive nature? Okay, well, in that Your Morning Basket episode that I mentioned earlier, Angelina Stanford tells us that fairytales are not just true, they're truer than true, and she speaks to the redemptive nature. Listen in to what she said. Angelina Stanford (04:48): One of the reasons that I think fairytales are so incredibly important now more than ever, is because living in the modern age, we have a tendency to think of what is real as what can be experienced through the senses, what I can see and touch, and feel, and hear, and taste. For us, that is what is real. The problem with that then is, that when that becomes your definition for what is real, where does that leave things like God, and justice, and mercy, and truth, and beauty, and goodness, right? We have lost touch as moderns with transcendent virtues and transcendent realities, and one of the things I like to say about fairytales is if fairytales are not just true, they are truer than true. They are realer than real, because fairytales help to remind us of that, which is the realist reality, the transcendent. Fairytales help us to remember that there is a mysterious reality beyond what we can experience from the senses. (05:46): That there is magic. This is an enchanted universe, because God is in the universe, and it was a created universe, lovingly created, and there is meaning inherent in everything in the creation. And as moderns, we have lost touch of that, so much. I mean, when we get into conversations where people say, "Well, I don't believe in God, because I can't see him." (06:07): Well, we have gotten right to the heart of this question, right? Is the only thing that's real that which you can experience with the senses, or is there a greater reality that transcends the natural world? And that is what fairytales constantly help us to remember and to stay in touch with, is the greater spiritual reality, that which is realer than real. And so, inherent in the very pattern of the story themselves is that fairytales retell the gospel. Every single fairytale tells the gospel story, and that is because the gospel story itself is a fairy tale. (06:39): The two basic fairytale patterns are that there is a princess, and the princess has been endangered in some way, right? Sometimes it's an evil stepmother, sometimes it's a monster, but there are some obstacle that must be overcome, and the true prince is the only one that can save the princess. So he overcomes the obstacles, he rescues her, and then he marries her. And very often in these stories, there's some sort of death and resurrection moment, like Sleeping Beauty, right? Where she is asleep, which is a picture of death, and he kisses her and he awakens her. That is the gospel story, because Christ is the bridegroom who comes to slay the dragon and redeem his bride from death. He resurrects her. His kiss brings her back to life. And the reason that these stories end with, "And they get married and they live happily ever after," is because that is also the gospel story, because the gospel story does not end with the resurrection. (07:33): It ends with the marriage supper of the lamb, when Christ the bridegroom marries his bride and they have a celebration. That's why there's that pattern in these stories, and that's why it's so deeply satisfying to us. We need the prince to awaken the princess with that kiss. It has to happen. Our soul is longing for it, because we know that's what's right. And the other variation of that, that's part of the gospel story as well, is that Adam and Eve in the garden are the children of God, and what happens in the fall, they are exiled, right? So you've got that story pattern, that fairytale pattern of the parent and child have been separated. There's an exile. That relationship has been lost. And so, you go through these fairytale stories and obstacles are overcome, and finally at the end, the child is reunited with the parent, because that is also what Christ does, right? (08:20): He comes to marry the bridegroom and rescue the princess, and slay the dragon, but he also comes to restore that lost parent-child relationship. And so, you see all of these variations of the gospel story in these fairytales themselves, and it's just fascinating, and that's why I think we feel that deep, deep satisfaction with that, and they lived happily ever after. People will sometimes say, "Well, fairytales are so unrealistic. They're teaching kids terrible things. They're teaching kids that once you get married, life is smooth sailing." (08:48): No, that is not what a fairytale is teaching, because that's not how fairytales work. A fairytale is not a marriage handbook. A fairytale is pointing us to the transcendent reality of the spiritual realm. And in that reality, the bridegroom is going to marry the bride, and it is going to be happily ever after eternally. And so, it's not a marriage handbook, but it is absolutely pointing to those transcendent spiritual realities that our souls desperately long for, as I've said, and I think that's why children and adults and everyone, I mean, I personally get teary-eyed at the end of some fairytales, because it speaks so deeply to my own longings in my soul. And when you get to the end a truly satisfying story, when you get to the end, you feel this is how it should be. Sarah Mackenzie (09:37): Here's the thing most people don't know. Fairytales were not written for children. In the case of, for example, the Grimm brothers fairytales, they were collected to preserve their German cultural heritage. They were collected by adults for adults to read. Even the retold fairytales by Charles Perot, who I mentioned. He's the one who changed a lot of fairytales to make them cautionary tales. And by doing that, sadly, he stripped out a lot of the Christian redemption that is baked into those fairytales. Even He wrote them for adults. He actually wrote them for the French court in Versailles, that was really lacking in moral values. And so, he rewrote the fairy as of cautionary lessons for them. And they were really only relegated to the nursery during the enlightenment, when things were relegated to the nursery, if they were being devalued. (10:33): Like, these aren't worth as much to us anymore. We are above this. We're above the transcendent redemptive stories of fairytales. We're now on the cold, hard facts. So they got relegated to the nursery. Interesting, right? Because that means the fairytales weren't actually intended for children. But also interesting is the work of Bruno Bettelheim. He wrote a book called The Uses of Enchantment, and he is a psychologist who did a very thorough study on how fairytales impact the psychology of children, and the crucial role that fairy tales actually play in children's psychological development. (11:13): This is what he writes in the introduction to The Uses of Enchantment. "In all these and many other respects of the entire children's literature, with rare exceptions, nothing can be as enriching and satisfying to child and adult alike, as the folk fairytale. True, on an overt level, fairytales teach little about the specific conditions of life in modern mass society. These tales were created long before it came into being, but more can be learned from them about the inner problems of human beings, and of the right solutions to their predicaments in any society than from any other type of story within a child's comprehension. Since the child at every moment of his life is exposed to this society in which he lives, he will certainly learn to cope with its conditions, provided his inner resources permit him to do so." (12:05): "Just because his life is often bewildering to him, the child needs even more to be given the chance to understand himself in this complex world with which he must learn to cope. To be able to do so, the child must be helped to make some coherent sense out of the turmoil of his feelings. He needs ideas on how to bring his inner house into order, and on that basis to be able to create order in his life. He needs, and this hardly requires emphasis at this moment in our history, a moral education which subtly and by implication only conveys to him the advantages of moral behavior, not through abstract ethical concepts, but through that which seems tangibly right and therefore meaningful to him. The child finds this kind of meaning through fairytales." (13:00): Think of a story like a Hansel and Gretel. On the surface, it's a story of two siblings lost in the woods, abandoned by their parents, and they encounter a wicked witch. Deeper down, it's about abandonment and resourcefulness, and the bond between siblings, and the reuniting with the parent, and the world being made right again. Bettelheim believed that by engaging with stories like Hansel and Gretel, kids could confront their own fears. Here's what he says on page 166 of his book, "A witch as created by the child's anxious fantasies will haunt him, but a witch he can push in into her own oven and burn to death is a witch the child can believe himself rid of. As long as children continue to believe in witches, they always have and always will, up to the age when they are no longer compelled to give their formless apprehensions, human-like appearance, they need to be told stories in which children, by being ingenious, rid themselves of these persecuting figures of their imagination. By succeeding in doing so, they gain immensely from the experience, as did Hansel and Gretel Angelina Stanford (14:21): G.K. Chesterton, who has a lot to say about fairytales, he puts it this way, "If you don't read your child fairytales, you don't take away the fear of dragons. You simply take away from them the promise that Saint George will slay the dragon, and that's what the child needs. The fear is already there." (14:38): So I think there's a lot of answers to the question, why do children love? But I think that's one of them is that the fairytale itself is deeply, deeply comforting to a child. And the older you get, I think you start to become disconnected with that part. Over and over, I get asked the question, "Well, what about the weird parts of fairytales?" Because yes, there are some weird stuff in fairytales. I have never, ever run across a kid who finds any of it weird. It's the parents. (15:06): And I've had this experience where I'm reading a fairytale out loud to my children and I'm thinking, "What the, this is nuts. It's what is going on? And this could not be weirder." And I look at my children, they're not even batting an eye, right? I mean, it's not weird to them at all, because everything is weird to a kid, right? The fact that the grass is green, and the sun rises and sets, the whole world is just full of wonder, and mystery, and puzzlement, and in a sense, enchantment. I think that's part of the reason why they want to hear these stories over and over, is that it's not the plot and the suspense that's driving the enjoyment of the story. There's something else going on there, namely that there's just a deep satisfaction going on in their soul. Sarah Mackenzie (15:46): I mentioned at the beginning that a fairytale structure usually involves magic. And in his book, Tending the Heart of Virtue, Dr. Vigen Guroian makes the case that the magic in fairytales is an analog for grace in our real lives. It's an analogy, and a fairytale has to have a happy ending, because we are offered a happy ending. The marriage supper of the lamb, just like the marriage suppers, the marriage feasts at the end of so many of our favorite fairytales. So the Prince and the Princess lived happily ever after, is truer than true. It's a reuniting, right? A reuniting with our father, much like the reuniting of child and parent in Hansel and Gretel or in other fairytales. This is what Angelina Stanford means when she says fairytales are truer than true. (16:45): So what should you do if your kids do find fairytales to be too scary? Because I know a lot of listeners have sensitive kids who are kind of freaked out by scary stories, and the fairytales can be a little dark, a little scary. And here's what I want to say to you. Listen, you know your kids better than anyone else in the world. You know what they're ready for. I have six kids and they've all been ready for varying levels of darkness and fairytales at different times. So trust your God-given instincts here. The good news is, your kids are never too old for fairytales. So if you feel like your kid is not ready for a certain story or a certain version of a story, trust yourself. Read a different one. And then, remember what we said before, fairytales were actually not really meant to be read by children in the first place, but they can be, because as Bruno Bettelheim studies have shown, and as he wrote about in The Uses of Enchantment, children do really well with them. (17:44): They actually do better with fairytales than they do without them on the whole. I think there's a reason why the great Christian authors, J.R.R. Tolkien, CS Lewis, Madeline Engel, I can go on and on, why they were all so formed by fairytales. And I personally have found it really interesting. I ask authors and illustrators here at Read Aloud Revival, on the podcast and in RAR premium all the time, what books most formed you as a child? And I'll tell you what, the odds are incredibly high that they're going to tell me a fairytale. It's just how it works. They're going to probably say a fairytale, and they're also probably going to say Charlotte's Web. Those are the two things that they're probably going to name. (18:29): So when you do read fairytales, and when your kids are gobbling them up or leaning forward in their seat as you read, you can remember what G.K. Chesterton taught us about fairytales, that they offer hope and reassurance, teaching them that courage and goodness can overcome evil. By reading fairytales, we give them Saint George to slay their dragons. (19:23): There's something universal too about fairytales. You might know there are over 500 versions of Cinderella from cultures all over the world. It is really fascinating. It's a universal story. In fact, in the book list that goes with this podcast episode, the fairytale book list, you'll find several versions of Cinderella from all different places in the world. Here's a little more from Pam Barnhill and Angelina Stanford on the universality of fairytales. Pam Barnhill (19:55): Do you find that the fairytales from the other cultures point to the same truths that you've been talking about the European fairytales point to? Angelina Stanford (20:02): I do. And that is one of the fascinating things for me. It's one of the ways in which I think that these stories are just imprinted in our hearts. I truly believe that this is the story that God is telling in the universe, the story of the child being reconciled to the parent and the child, that the prince is going to slay the dragon and rescue the princess. This is the story of reality and it's imprinted in our hearts. And so, I think that every time we tell a story, we cannot help but tell that story, because it's the story inside of us and we just keep telling variations of that same story. And if you want to talk about evidence, for me personally, that is tremendous evidence of the truth of the gospel, is it is inescapable. It is inherent in human expression, and even when people try to not tell that story, they end up telling that story. Sarah Mackenzie (20:54): Okay, so you're convinced, I hope, and now you want to add some fairytales to your home library, to your bookshelf. While we've created a book list for you of favorite fairytales and fairytale retellings that you can find in the show notes of this episode, readaloudrevival.com/243, or you can find it by texting the word fairytale to the number 33777. That's the word fairytale, like it's all one word. Fairytale, to 33777 is the number. The book list includes picture books, and illustrated versions, and retellings for all different ages. It is not comprehensive by any stretch of the imagination. You probably know by now that our team reads every single book on our book list. I personally read almost every single one of them, and so it can't be a comprehensive list. There's so many I haven't read, but this collection I think will put some excellent fairytales into the hands of your kids and into your home library. (21:55): I know that some people are quite opposed to reading fairytales that are retellings for the reasons we talked about, that sometimes when they're retold, they're not given a happy ending, and in that case, the gospel nature of them has been edited out, right? If this transcendent truth about who we are and what we're made for is sort of built into a fairytale, if we take out the happy ending, it turns it into something that's not a fairytale anymore. And of course, we see this in the Disney versions, that the Christian elements have been removed, the symbols, there's a lot of redemptive symbols, Christian symbols in the fairytales themselves, and those have usually been removed, not always. As I understand it, I've heard Dr. Vigen Guroian, the author of Tending the Heart of Virtue talk about how the Disney version of Snow White is chock-full of Christian imagery, which is really fun. (22:54): But I really enjoy reading a variety of fairytales with my kids, retellings included. I think they make for excellent discussions. What makes this version of Little Red Riding Hood different from that one? How is this one similar or different from that one? Which one do you like better? Which one is the thing that stands out to you most? What's something you don't want to forget? Which kind of reminds me to say when it comes to fairytales, and really this is true with stories in general, the story itself is enough. You don't actually need to point out to your kids that, for example, the wood cutter is an analog for Christ in Little Red Riding Hood, and that he is coming to you. You don't need to point that. Actually, it would if you did not point this to your kids. Instead, let the story just become part of who they are. (23:47): Just read it, let it feed them, and then when they're older, they will have it inside them, and then they will know this to be true. Because as soon as you heard it, I don't know about you, but even that little snippet from Angelina Stanford that I played here when she was talking to Pam Barnhill, I'm like, "Whoa, that's true, isn't it?" (24:05): It's like you see it and then you're like, "Oh, it's kind of the same as when you're reading the Chronicles of Narnia, and they're just so much better if you don't tell your kids." So children, Aslan is an analogy for Christ. Aslan on the stone table is an analogy for Christ on the cross. Our kids know more and they understand more, and they feel more than we give them credit for, and we have to trust this story to do its work. (24:33): The Holy Spirit is at work in our children in ways that we can't see. We can't touch, we can't imagine. So we just read the stories and we let the Holy Spirit do the work through the themselves. Most of all, enjoy the stories. Enjoy them with your kids. That's really the heart of reading fairytales with your kids. And then use our book list to help you find some to add to your own shelves, to check out your library, or to add to your own permanent collection. I can mention just a few from our book list as favorites. You probably all know by now, I love the illustrated collection by Scott Gustafson, it's called Classic Fairytales. He's got several collections actually, and all of them are just gorgeous. Scott was just featured on the most recent episode here on the Read Aloud Revival podcast, so if you miss that one, go back and listen. (25:24): Actually, even better yet, that one's a video podcast. You can go back and watch it. His artwork is just astonishing and it's truly fine art gallery quality art, so when you read Classic Fairytales with your kids, you're putting an art gallery in their lap. For slightly older kids, I really love Trina Schart Hyman's picture book fairytales. Saint George and the Dragon is my absolute favorite. She's also got a fabulous little Red Riding Hood. There are others. Jerry Pinkney also has a few gorgeous versions of fairytales. Oh, the Princess and The Goblin by George McDonald. Actually, there's a whole bunch by George McDonald. I'm going to put some versions in the book list that you're going to really like. There's a version that's published by Rabbit Room of George McDonald fairytales. I think it's The Light Princess, I think is the one they have. And then Word On Fire is also publishing some George McDonald now, and they've got a collection called The Golden Key that are several fairytales by George McDonald. (26:27): Fabulous. And talk about fairytales that nurtured the imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien, CS Lewis, and the Christian imagination in general. Oh my gosh. Okay, so I mentioned that we've got several different versions of Cinderella on the book list. There's a Cinderella retelling for just about every culture. Not on our book list, but in general there are. We put several of those on our book list. Oh, and then for teens, let's talk about teens. I really love Shannon Hale's retelling of The Goose Girl. That's a full length novel and I found it pretty hard to put down. (27:01): What else? Oh, Regina Doman series, works of genius, I tell you. Regina Doman has written a whole series of fairytales retold that will actually probably help your kids see the redemptive nature of fairytales without you having to point them out. You know what? You might have a hard time putting those down yourself. There's a whole bunch of them. We'll put them on the book list. Look for Regina Doman Fairytales Retold. They're actually modernized and they are fabulous. So good. Okay, I'm going to stop. Just go get the list already. Readaloudrevival.com/243, or text the word fairytale, all one word, to the number 33777. (27:48): Now let's hear from Read Aloud Revival Kids on books they're reading and loving these days. Jay (27:58): Hello, my name is Jay. I live in Ohio. I'm six years old. The book I recommend is Magic Treehouse Night of the Ninjas, and I love of it, because it has ninjas, which are super sneaky and the has a lot of pink, which is my favorite color. Sarah Mackenzie (28:18): Are we looking at the regular book or the graphic novel version? Jay (28:21): Oh yeah, the graphic novel. Bye. Ruby (28:26): Hi, mate. My name is Ruby and I'm three years old. We live in Ohio. Sarah Mackenzie (28:35): Yep. What book is this that you're recommending? Ruby (28:38): Well, it's called [inaudible 00:28:39]. My favorite part is when they meet the swamp pot [inaudible 00:28:49], when they go boo. Sarah Mackenzie (28:48): Yeah. Do they also go trick or treating? Ruby (28:48): I just love trick or treating. Levi (28:57): My name is Levi. I am nine years old. I live in South Carolina, and I love Mooses with Bazookas because it's hilarious. Julia (29:08): Hi, my name is Julia and I'm five years old, and I was from [inaudible 00:29:13], Texas, and my favorite book I recommend is A Wild Robot, because it's so fun. Vivian (29:23): My name is Vivian. I'm nine years old. I live in Kissimmee, Florida, and my favorite book is The Penderwicks, because I love adventure. Audrey (29:31): My name is Audrey Went. I'm 11 years old. I'm in Kissimmee, Florida. My favorite book is The Fudge Series by Judy Blue. I like it, because they make me laugh. Sarah Mackenzie (29:44): Thank you, kids. If your kids would like to tell us about a book they love, head to readaloudrevival.com/message to leave a voicemail, and we will air it on an upcoming episode of the show. Show notes for this episode are at readaloudrevival.com/243. Again, you can grab our fairytale book list there, or you can get it by texting fairytale to 33777. I hope you read a fairytale this week. Thanks for listening, and until next time, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.