RAR #245 How to Read a Fairy Tale

Sarah Mackenzie (00:05): Welcome to episode 245 of the Read-Aloud Revival Podcast, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with homeschooling. I'm your host, Sarah Mackenzie. Right now we are also the show that helps you fall in love with reading fairytales to your children, or at least I hope that's true. In episode 243, we talked all about why fairytales aren't like other stories, why they matter more and make a bigger difference in your child's life than most other stories do. (00:38): Today we're going to talk about how. Now, as soon as we realize that fairytales are full of gospel truth and symbolism and deep meaningful resonance, many of us start to wonder, should we point this out to our kids? Should we tell our kids about it? Fairytales often follow one of two main narrative structures In many, many fairytales, the narrative ends with a wedding feast. These are wedding feast fairytales. They often involve a prince rescuing a princess, getting married and end with a wedding feast. (01:16): For example, sleeping beauty. In Sleeping beauty, the princess falls into a deep sleep, is awakened by a kiss from the prince, gets married and there's a marriage feast. Sleep then, in Sleeping Beauty is analogous to death and being awakened by a prince, by a kiss from the Prince, resurrection. The marriage feast is very much like the wedding supper of the lamb. Christ and his church, of course, are often described in scripture as bridegroom and bride. And yes, our bridegroom will rescue us and give us our happily ever after in the marriage supper of the lamb. (02:05): We see this time and time again in these wedding feast fairytales. They are these threads of truth that remind us of something that's truer than true. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, most of the princess tales, they tell this gospel truth that we know. Which is why GK Chesterton said, "The gospel is a fairy tale come true." Because fairytales have a certain form and the gospel is also told in that form. That's why Chesterton said that the gospel specifically is a fairytale come true. That's why as we discussed in episode 243 of this podcast, Angelina Stanford said that fairytales are truer than true, because they impart this true narrative structure that we know is right, deep in our souls. (02:56): The other really common narrative structure in fairytales involves not a wedding feast, but the reuniting of parents and children. Parents and children are separated and need to be reunited. Stories like Hansel and Gretel, actually Snow White does this too, Rapunzel, I could go on. They're all essentially stories about children being separated from their parents. Of course we know the original, the scriptural story of children being separated from their parents in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden is them being separated from God, right? Then the whole rest of scripture tells the story of reuniting with our father. (03:47): Every time I hear someone really wise talk about the symbolism and the deep gospel messages of fairytales, especially Grimm's fairytales, I feel sort of like the top of my head comes off. I wonder if that's happening to you as I mentioned these stories. The apple in snow White has an awful lot in common with the apple in the Garden of Eden. These are the things you can't unsee once you see them. They're precisely why fairytales aren't just mere stories. I also miss them, usually, someone has to point them out to me. I wouldn't have known that the apple in Snow White is like the apple in the Garden of Eden. Or the true love's kiss at the end of Sleeping Beauty is like resurrection. I would've known that until someone points it out, then it seems really obvious. (04:41): But maybe you wonder like I did, should we learn what all these fairytales mean and then tell our children? Then when we're reading Snow White for example, should we point out the similarities between the fairytale and the story in the Bible? Should we point out the symbolism and all the underlying meanings or should we point out that Cinderella's virtue is what makes her beautiful? In the original Grimm version of that story, Cinderella and her stepsisters are all equally physically beautiful. What makes Cinderella more beautiful than her stepsisters is not physical beauty like it is in the Disney movie, in the original Grimm it's her virtue. Should we point this out to our kids? This is a question that I've asked and thought of, I know many of you probably have too. It's really emphatically agreed upon by those same experts who can teach us so much about the gospel correlation in fairytales, that no, we should not tell our children these things. We should not point them out to our kids. (05:42): I want to pass the microphone, so to speak, to someone who really knows and has discussed exactly this. Dr. Vigen Guroian wrote a tremendous book on fairytales called Tending the Heart of Virtue. I mentioned this book in episode 243 and my friend Haley Stewart who is the host of the Votive podcast for Word On Fire, she recently interviewed Dr. Guroian and he spoke about this very tendency, to want to as parents explain what's happening in fairytales to children, to sort of pick them apart in front of our children, and he cautions us not to do that. Haley, in this episode asks if we should try to parse meaning and then pass that on to our kids as we're reading fairytales, listen to what Dr. Guroian says in his response. Dr. Vigen Guroian (06:35): The kinds of mistakes we make in instructing children in literature. One, summarize the story. Well, then you invite them to ignore the movement of the narrative and they try to reduce it to almost a concept. What's the main point of the story or the main thesis? That's a mistake. Again, it's reductive and it moves them to a kind of reasoning which escapes the imagination. They abandon their imaginative powers and rationalization takes place, and that's a mistake. You have to leap into the story and let the story take you. Just leap into the river and let it take you where it will. That's true about all stories I think. Haley Stewart (07:38): I love that. It does go against what we often think of as, this is part of a child's education, they have to do the book report or complete this assignment, that some way to quantify how much data for how much they've learned. Yet that's often counterproductive to the more important piece of that education, is that their imagination is starting to be formed and they're diving in and using a different part of their mind. Sarah Mackenzie (08:15): You can listen to that whole episode in your podcast app. It's the Word on Fire Votive Podcast. The episode is called Why Fairytales Are Essential Reading. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. (08:26): You how in many kids' movies, there are jokes that are there for the parents. You can watch, I don't know, anything from Pixar, Disney, Finding Nemo or whatever, and it's like the filmmakers left jokes in there or put jokes in there that only the adults would see, and it actually usually makes the movie a bit more interesting and enjoyable for the adults who are watching it with their children. They're oftentimes not appropriate jokes. They're oftentimes a little debasing. Well, the same thing oftentimes happens in fairytales, except they elevate the adult instead of being something that it reduces us to something less than what we are. (09:34): Just as the adult watching the movie with their child might see things that they didn't see before when they watched the movie with their kids, fairytales do something differently. You just read the story with your child and the story itself is enough, but then your edified in a different way because you're getting something different from the story than your child is, something you are ready for that now that you're an adult that you weren't ready for as a child. Because as a child, the story itself is the thing. This is why CS Lewis famously wrote in a dedication of one of the Narnia books, "Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again." Because as small children, we just hear the story or read the story and it becomes part of us. As adults, we read them and we start to see connections there and we enjoy them in a whole new way, especially if someone points them out to us. If you're like me and you're like, "I missed all of that until someone pointed it out to us." (10:35): But what we're actually doing when we read fairytales is presenting them to our kids so they can love them. That's the point. That's the goal. Not so that they can see why Snow White eating the apple is like Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden. Or not so we can say, "Ooh, see what the Grimm brothers did there, Sleeping Beauty falls asleep, and that's like death, and only true loves Kiss can awaken her, just the way love from God is only how we ourselves are saved." That's true and it's amazing and it's so cool as an adult reading these fairytales to see it, which is why you get to be old enough to read fairytales again. It's why now when I read Snow White with my kids, I enjoy it every bit as much as they are. They're enjoying it for where they are and I'm enjoying it at a different deeper level and everybody gets what they're fit for. (11:31): I recently listened to an episode of the Symbolic World Podcast and it spoke just to this. In the episode, the episode itself is called Fairytales as the Music of the Spheres. The show is hosted by Jonathan Pageau. In this particular episode, he is sharing a conference session that he gave recently and he's just playing the conference session. The whole thing is excellent. It's heady, there's no intro, so you're going to listen to this episode and if you do that, you'll feel like you just dropped in on a college level lecture halfway in. But at the end of this particular episode, one of the conference attendees asked Jonathan Pageau a question, and I just loved Jonathan's response. Listen in. Speaker 5 (12:22): Is the purpose of fairytales different for adults than for children, and or is there something different adults are supposed to get out of it than children are? Jonathan Pageau (12:34): No, I think yes, I think adults can get more out of different things out of fairytales and it has to do in some ways with the play. It's the same with music. When you start with the child, you say, "Just play the piece, do the different exercises," and they learn the exercises. Then as you get older, at some point then you can listen to a fugue and you can notice the great things that Bach is doing and taking you out of the pattern and then hinting at it and teasing you and then bringing you back, and you can actually more consciously see what's going on. (13:14): I think that that's what adults can do is. That now... It's actually fun, especially the fairy tales you know really well as a child and that you knew and as an adult now go back and say, "I'm going to take this seriously." All of a sudden you can see these beautiful things. They can unfold riches in a more conscious and intellectual way that can be quite fun, and more than fun, but that can actually reveal to you some deep mysteries. Actually even about scripture, by the way. There are some things that I've understood in scripture that I understood because I was reading fairytales. That all of a sudden I was like, "Oh, that's one of the things that's going on." And because it's close, but it's not, so it makes you think of the scriptural story differently and it reflects back on it and you think, "Why is it different? Why is it the same?" Then you get these insights. Speaker 5 (14:06): Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. For kids, is there something... Because you mentioned at the end of your talk, there's things they see that maybe it's harder for you to see as an adult and just any more about that, in terms of [inaudible 00:14:20]. Jonathan Pageau (14:19): That there's things... I'm sorry, I didn't understand. Speaker 5 (14:21): The students are seeing or the children are seeing that's maybe- Jonathan Pageau (14:24): They'll see it implicitly. They'll see it implicitly by their attention. It's like a child loves something, and children love fairytales. You don't have to explain the fairytale to them, especially now when they're super young, they just love to hear them. So it's rejoice in that. It's wonderful. They love the stories. Then as they get older, then you can tease out the applications. (14:50): It would be a great idea, for example, for an education program to go through the fairytales, let's say three times in the curriculum. You have them in kindergarten, first grade, you just read them to the kids, you play with them, you have them memorize them, you do them as poems, you do them as plays, you just get them to do them. Then maybe at around, I would say 12 years old, then you go back into them and then you see what fruit that those patterns have produced. Then senior year of high school, then ask a senior to analyze a fairytale and to do it like the structure of it and show how its literary references to be able to demonstrate how the variability and how it looks like this myth or it looks like these other things. I think that would be a great way to do fairytales. Sarah Mackenzie (15:43): Isn't that beautiful? (16:00): For most of the best books, you can read them to a wide range of ages and everyone takes what they're fit for. You can read, for example, C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Your 4-year-old will be enchanted and your 10-year-old will be enchanted, but will experience it differently than the 4-year-old. Your 17-year-old, same thing. They will love it, but they will read it and get something different than the 4-year-old and the 10-year-old, and so will you, by the way. You'll get something different from it than your 4-year-old, your 10-year-old, your 17-year-old. You'll see things you hadn't seen there in all the previous readings you might have done. It'll be a new experience because of who you are, where you're at, what stage you're ready for. The book itself is a feast and it offers something for everyone depending on their ages. Fairytales do the same. (17:00): I know for me, every time I read Little Women, I get something different from it. I got something different from it when I read it at 40 than I did when I read it in my early thirties. Definitely different than when I first read it as a teen, because we get what we're ready to get. When it comes to fairytales, our young children are ready to fall in love with the story, and that's enough. Then as they grow, they naturally begin to make some connections and see things like, "How interesting that in so many fairytales, the princess falls into a deep sleep and has to be awakened by the prince. Huh? Why are there apples in so many fairytales?" We see things, we see them with our soul, see them implicitly, even if they can't quite articulate what they're seeing.Jonathan Pageau says, "They see it implicitly with their attention." They see the fairytale implicitly. (17:54): Then as we get older, we start to make these connections. We start to see the metaphors. We start to see the patterns, patterns is probably a better word. We start to see that there is a pattern in these fairytales where a princess falls asleep and has to be awakened by a prince, and what does that mean, and why does it show up again and again, and what else happens in the story surrounding it? Why does sleeping beauty prick her finger on a spindle? What does that actually mean? Because a spindle's not actually sharp, so why? I usually need someone to show me. I usually need someone like Jonathan Pageau to tell me, "Look at all the symbols, look at all the patterns that are in this story. Look at what I can see here." Exactly the way that a teacher who is really excited about something invites their students to look at it. (18:45): As a homeschooling mother, I always like to try to remember that I'm beach combing and I'm finding a seashell and I'm holding it up and saying, "Look at this. Look what I found. Oh my goodness, look at how this pattern moves over here. Did you see that?" That's so different than a teacher who comes in with a posture of, "Come sit down. I'm going to teach you all the things you need to know. I'm going to fill your head with content." No, our kids see the fairytales implicitly as Jonathan Pageau said. Then as adults, we can listen to someone unpack a fairytale, unpack Cinderella or Snow White or Puss in Boots or any other fairytale. It's just as enjoyable for us as for our kids to read these stories because we are finally old enough as C.S Lewis says, to enjoy fairytales again. Now we want someone to show us all the analogies and patterns that are there, and because we love the stories and have been formed by them, we are ready for it. (19:48): I really appreciated that analogy that Jonathan Pageau used in the episode where he says that reading fairytales to a young child is like teaching a child to play the piano. First, you want them to love the music, Bach, to hear the music in their soul, just to love it. Then they learn to play Bach. They're not dissecting it. They're not finding out... They're not doing music theory. They're not unpacking all the different movements. They're listening to the music, they're hearing the music, they're playing the music, and they get to know Bach music on a soul level. (20:28): Then when they're a little older, we can start pulling it apart. And because they love it already, they're willing to, interested in hearing what's different. If someone approached me with Snow White and the first time I read it was picked apart, it would've ruined the story. But as an adult who loves the story because I was formed by it as a child, like most of us have been, whether we know it or not, regardless of the version we were formed on. It's a little bit to me like the difference between a child playing with a frog that they caught in a pond and watching the way it moves and how its legs stretch and how it moves through space and how it sounds, how it feels in your hands. That's a very different experience than dissecting a dead frog on a table, picking apart a frog in dissection. The dissection itself isn't bad. I don't like doing it. It's just not what comes first. Who cares what the inside of a frog is like unless you love the frog. (21:38): First, we love and then that love helps us pick things apart later. It's why in RAR Premium, I always do a video helping kids look closely at a story, doing the same thing where I feel like I'm beach combing and I'm finding a seashell and saying, "Look what I found. Look what I found in the hero's journey of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Look what I found in the literative use that this author chose." It's so fun, but it doesn't happen first. The first thing you do is read the story, always. I even say that in the videos. First, read the story, because the story is going to be the thing you fall in love with. We don't shape loves by picking anything apart or dissecting it, we shape loves by giving stories. And fairytales above all are an opportunity to shape our children's loves, to give them the opportunity to love that which is lovely, to love that which is true. (22:33): I've heard Jonathan Peau describe fairytales as a tuning fork for your soul. Our souls resonate with the truth, which is why fairytales have stood the test of time, because our souls resonate with the truth there. Then they set this tune and our souls resonate to be in tune with them, which is why we love them so much. It's why there's so many versions of Cinderella all over the world in all sorts of cultures, because there is an underlying truth in that story that our souls resonate with. We also find that truth in the gospel, which is why the gospel is a fairytale that really came true. So how do we read a fairytale? Well, we read it aloud. We just present it. We let our kids fall in love with it. That's enough. You can have that same experience of having the top of your head come off by listening to someone unpack a fairytale, how they work, why they work, what the metaphors or symbols mean, what the patterns mean. (23:40): In that episode that I just played a snippet from, this Symbolic Podcast, Jonathan Pageau, earlier in that same episode, he takes you through Jack and the Beanstalk and he connects it to the story of Moses. I am telling you, I had to stop the podcast because I was awestruck that I had never seen it before. I would never in a million years have described Jack and the Beanstalk as being like the story of Moses, but as soon as Jonathan Pageau starts pointing at it, I'm like, "Oh my goodness, it's right there. That's amazing." But that's for you as the adult, that's dissecting the frog. (24:16): With your kids, how to read fairytales is just to read them, let the story do its work on the soul of your child, and then you get to listen to some really great podcasts. Let the top of your head come off so that when you sit down to read Jack and the Beanstalk or Puss in Boots or Snow White or Rumpelstiltskin, you'll go, "Oh my goodness, I can't believe I didn't see this before." And you'll enjoy it so much as much with your kids, but you won't be unpacking it or dissecting it for them before they've been able to fall in love and be shaped by it. (24:49): I'm going to put some links in the show notes to this episode of the two episodes that I shared snippets of one from Word On Fire, Votive, and one from the Symbolic World. I'm also going to share a couple of shows, some others that I've enjoyed that I think you may enjoy, if you like this idea of having somebody really wise walk you through a fairytale. I've been enjoying listening to podcasts about fairytales. Remember, these aren't for your kids. Your kids just need the stories. These episodes are for you. I think you'll enjoy them. I also think you'll enjoy reading fairytales with your kids more after you listen to them. If you've been enjoying these fairytale episodes here at Read-Aloud Revival, you'll definitely enjoy these other episodes as well. (25:35): Now, if you haven't yet, you can grab our brand new fairytales book list so you can read fairytales with your kids so that they too can fall in love with them, be shaped by them. You can get that fairytale book list by texting the word Fairytale, it's all one word, Fairytale, to the number 33777. Okay, let's hear from Read-Aloud Revival kids about the books they're loving lately. Markie (26:08): My name is Markie. Speaker 12 (26:11): How old are you? Markie (26:12): I'm three. Speaker 12 (26:14): Where are you from? Markie (26:14): From [inaudible 00:26:17], Ontario. Speaker 12 (26:18): What's your favorite book? Markie (26:21): Little Blue Truck, Good Night. Speaker 12 (26:22): Why do you like it? Markie (26:22): Because I like it. Speaker 12 (26:27): Do you like to read it before bed? Markie (26:29): Yes. Speaker 12 (26:31): Thank you. Isabella (26:33): Hello, I'm Isabella. I'm from Kansas. The books I recommend are The Winx Saga and the Widow King trilogy. They're both hilarious books and they have action and adventure. They're two of my favorite books, and they will become yours. I promise, they'll capture the reader's hearts. Beau (26:51): Hello, my name is Beau and I'm six years old and I live in Miami. My favorite book is [inaudible 00:26:58] because it's funny. Luke (27:00): My name is Luke and I likes Apples to Oregon, and I'm four, and I live in Miami. Speaker 12 (27:08): Which is your favorite book? Luke (27:11): Apples to Oregon. Speaker 12 (27:12): Apples to Oregon. Why do you like it, Luke? Luke (27:14): Because there was a storm. Speaker 12 (27:17): Because there was a storm. Luke (27:17): Yes. Lila (27:21): My name is Lila. I live in Texas. I'm 11 years old, and I want to recommend the Vanderbeekers of 141st Street because the characters are very creative. They like to read books, and they have a bunch of pets. Penny (27:38): Hi, I'm Penny. I like it the How To Train Your Dragon books. I'm five. I'm from Idaho, and I like How To Train Your Dragon because it's so good. Speaker 12 (27:52): And you, Abby? Abby (27:52): Me like Daniel Tiger books. Speaker 12 (27:56): Yes. Abby is two years old and she likes Daniel Tiger. Why do you like Daniel Tiger, Abby? Abby (28:01): [inaudible 00:28:04]. Speaker 12 (28:04): Thank you. Irina Harris (28:06): Hello, my name is Irina Harris. I live in Kyle, Texas. I'd like to recommend two books called Gaston, which is the first one, and Antoinette, which is the second one. Their author is Kelly DiPucchio, and the pictures are super great and they're by Christian Robinson. I love the pictures of the dogs and they are so cute. See if you can find them at your library. Darcy (28:44): Hi, my name's Darcy. I'm six years old. I live Ontario, Canada, and my favorite book is Pinkalicious because she loves pink and she has a pet unicorn. Bailey (29:19): Hi, my name's Bailey and [inaudible 00:29:20] and I live in Ontario, Canada and I'm four years old. My favorite book is Trumpet of the Swan because the swan has a trumpet. Levi (29:27): Hi, I'm eight years old. My name is Levi and I live in Ontario, Canada. My favorite book is My Side of the Mountain because Sam builds a house and a tree and he has a makes a pet bird. Bye. Sarah Mackenzie (29:47): 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. (30:03): Show notes for this episode are at readaloudrevival.com/245. That's where you'll find everything recommended in today's show. I'll be back in two weeks with another brand new episode. But in the meantime, you know what to do, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.