You know how it is: you start thinking about something (Little Red Riding Hood, for instance) and suddenly it’s everywhere. There must be a word for that.
There have been innumerable re-tellings of LRRH, it seems. It’s no kindness to send you to this article (restricted access – but you can get there with your OU login) examining some Victorian versions – it’s very long, and unnecessary for TMA1. But there, I couldn’t resist it. Don’t go there! You could get lost for weeks…Anthony Browne’s Into the Forest on the other hand is wonderfully brief: new to me, and I was interested by the (sort of conflicting) Amazon.com reviews by the School Library Journal and the American Library Association. And their comments on Browne’s artistry might come in handy for Block 5 (Words and Pictures).
But what are fairy tales for? The wonderfully entitled ‘Breezes from Wonderland’ blog helpfully alluded to the Bettelheim (week 3) interpretation of fairy tales:
This week, in my course on the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, we read Bruno Bettelheim on the uses of enchantment and what he calls the “struggle for meaning.” Robert Darnton’s famous essay “Peasants Tell Tales” has the subtitle “The Meaning of Mother Goose.” The psychoanalyst and the historian provide competing models for constructing the “meaning” of fairy tales, with one arguing that children make psychological sense on their own of fairy tales, and the other making the case for the fairy tales as repositories of folk wisdom and programs for survival.
The posting is also picking up on another ‘competing model’ for the purpose of fairy tales: some psychologists’ research reported in The Guardian* that experience of the surreal sends our brains back to reality with a hunger to make sense of our surroundings.
On a much simpler level, I take comfort in the idea that ‘reading for pleasure’ is suggested as a predictor of success in life.
* Edit: also reported in the NY Times:
“We channel the feeling [of disorientation] into some other project, and it appears to improve some kinds of learning.”
EA300 Children's literature: a tutor's blog 
Oh dear…I clicked on the link and may be missing for sometime!
Happened to pick up a copy of today’s Guardian featuring ‘Great Fairytales’ – Red Riding Hood should be in Friday’s edition or you can order it from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/readeroffers/fairytales
Great link, thanks CharlieB. And for interest here’s today’s Observer commentary by Philip Pullman http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/11/fairytales-philip-pullman (the page itself links to Saturday’s and today’s tales).
And there’s yet more in The Guardian today: ‘Adult content warning: beware fairy stories’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/oct/13/adult-content-warning-fairy-stories
Again, the page itself links to The Guardian’s coverage.
There’s just so much that could have been written for our course in these Guardian articles. Alison Lurie writes in today’s commentary “The trick of disguising good advice as an exciting tale is centuries old. And in fact, even if the teller does not intend it, every story has a moral – it tells you what to admire and what to condemn; what to do and what not to do if you want to succeed in life.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/14/fairytales-wisdom-folly
The Guardian provided the Perrault version of LRRH yesterday – but without the final moral.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/15/red-riding-hood
Tell me about it! 🙂 I was tempted by the Folio Club again today, and noticed one of their joining offers is totally perfect for this stage of the course. I think I’m going to resist though!
http://www.foliosociety.com/book/AZ22/ultimate-fairy-tales-set
Great blog, thanks for creating it. Something to keep my brain in gear when I’m avoiding writing my TMA…
And finally….?
another blog has posted a neat list of links here http://medinger.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/fairy-tales-in-the-guardian/