Fairy Tales

As I child, I read and I read and I read. Interestingly, I don't remember learning to read though I do recall the laminated paper tools we used for phonetics. I also recall that in grade one, we were divided into two groups and I turned whenever the other group read Jimmy's name out loud. (Jimmy being the main boy character in our primer, and sounding a lot like Ginny when pronounced by a six year old). I do know that I read all the books in the children’s section of our town library by the time I was 12. I spent so much time with books that I could identify the publisher by the smell of the ink and texture of the paper.

In grades six and seven, I became engrossed in Andrew Lang's coloured Fairy Books. There are twelve books in the collection, published between 1889 and 1910. The Blue Fairy Book was the first and then the Red. The most widely known fairy tales were selected in the early books with lesser known stories in the later ones. I read them all - Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Pink, Gray, Violet, Crimson, Brown, Orange, Olive, and Lilac. Last night I read an essay by Barbara Sjoholm about "The Snow Queen" included in the Pink Fairy Book. Serendipitously, today I found my forty-year old, yellowed copy of the Blue Fairy Book.

As I grew older, I continued to read fairy tales and myth. I thought the value was in escapism not education. I began to realize the powerful influence that fairy tales have had on my values and decisions when I first read Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Estes is a Jungian psychologist who re-tells familiar tales and stories from around the world and then illustrates their import on the female psyche. I read her description of Hans Christian Anderson's "Red Shoes" and thought of Princess Diana. Brittney Spears also wears red shoes which dance out of control. "The Snow Queen", which is not included in Women Who Run with Wolves reflects the shattered shards of adolescence and dysfunctional families.

Classic fairy tales are no longer being read by children. Classic fairy tales are no longer being read to children by adults. Our society is lacking as a result. The tales are rooted in our history and provide universal lessons of risk, caution, and caring. Do cartoons, anamie, Air Guitar and Wii provide the same richness, just in a new cultural context? Maybe so, but certainly, the adult re-reading of old favorites is lost and symbols of the past, like the Little Match Girl and Red Shoes, are fading away. Adults need doses of fairy tales even more than children. Our prescription seems to be cardboard reality television and box office movies. Stories and magic in music, even the most popular, linger on and give me hope. Keep re-telling the old stories.