One of the best gifts you can instill in a child is a love of reading. As a parent, it’s also a great chance to revisit some of the classics you adored as a child.
But as I’ve made my way through my son’s shelf of bedtime favourites, I’ve started to notice that the storylines and characters are not as heart-warming as relatable as I felt they were when I was a child myself.
In fact, many of them are out and out weird.
Whilst my son listens, charmed by the magic and wonder of hypnotic music and trolls under bridges, more often than not I’m silently screaming ‘whaaaaat?’ in my head.
It’s an unwritten rule that you shouldn’t pick holes in the classics, but come on, I can’t be the only one who has ever wondered…
1. Why didn’t the biggest billy goat go first? Yes, there’s a sound moral tale behind The Three Billy Goats Gruff and the troll who loses everything. But from a purely practical point of view, why didn’t the biggest Billy Goat just go first, hoof the troll off the bridge and save all the drama?
2. Shouldn’t the Gingerbread Man’s demise carry a parental warning? I’ve tried to remind my tearful son that he enjoys eating gingerbread men just as much as the fox in the story does. His response? ‘BUT I DON’T EAT GINGERBREAD MEN THAT TALK. THAT’S NOT KIND.’ It’s hard to argue with that.
3. Wasn’t the Pied Piper’s reaction massively OTT? Seriously, could he not just have led the kids off to the mountain for a DAY to prove his point? I’m pretty sure the mayor would have coughed up sharpish.
4. Does the mammy in I’ll Love You Forever have attachment issues? It’s one thing to reassure your kid that, no matter how old they get, you’ll always love them. It’s another thing entirely to drive across town (with a ladder) to sneak in their window for a cuddle… when they’re a sleeping twenty-something.
5. What’s going on with the ‘child bride’ theme in The Little Mermaid? Ariel was about 15 years old in Hans Christian Andersen’s story, which makes the romance side of the story (with the considerably older Prince) more ‘bleugh’ than ‘awww’. If your Little Mermaid knowledge is solely based on Disney, read the original and have your innocence destroyed.
6. How is feeling a pea an indicator of pedigree? Even as a child I remember being baffled by The Princess and the Pea. We’ve all met people with a fairly specific wish list of qualities they want to feature in a future spouse, but it’s worrying that anyone’s checklist would include ‘strong ability to detect small vegetables through bedding’.
7. Did Little Red Riding Hood’s mother take free-range parenting too far? WTF was Little Red Riding Hood’s mother doing sending her on her own through a dark wood that’s home to a carnivore? Why does she arm her daughter solely with some fairly useless advice – ‘Stay on the path’ – instead of giving her some pepper spray?
8. Why didn’t Prince Charming remember Cinderella’s face? He danced with her all night, right? If he’s that bloomin’ charming why can’t he remember what she looks like? How on earth is shoe-size a more reliable process of identification?
9. Shouldn’t Goldilocks get her comeuppance? Whilst every wolf and witch is getting sliced open and burned alive, Goldilocks gets away with breaking and entering, destruction of property and porridge theft. Where’s the justice?
10. Did Quentin Tarantino consult on these books? Kidnapping, caged children, burning and boiling alive… There is a freakish amount of violence and destruction in most fairytales. Not ideal when you’ve yet to broach the concept of death with your youngster.
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