Changing Endings...

Found this article at the Telegraph about changing the endings of traditional children's stories: BBC gives nursery rhymes a fairytale ending by Paul Stokes

According to recent broadcasts, Humpty Dumpty was not irreparably damaged in his great fall and Little Miss Muffet has no particular fear of spiders.

The examples have been picked up in recent programmes on the network's CBeebies children's channel.

Last Friday's Something Special, aimed at children with special needs but popular with all under-fives, included a singalong feature in which the lyrics were changed.

Instead of all the King's horses and all the King's men being unable to put him together again, they "made Humpty happy again".

Tom Harris, Labour MP for Glasgow South, who watched the show with his sons aged five and three, described the re-worked version as "pathetic".

He was also critical of a previous episode of Big Cook Little Cook in which Little Miss Muffet welcomes a spider that sits down beside her.

And this is the BBC's response also from the article:

The BBC defended its decision to change the words which it says was for "creative" reasons and not to sanitise the rhymes.

A spokeswoman pointed out that the nursery rhymes in their original form were maintained in full on the CBeebies website.

The article also linked back to a January 2009 article: Traditional fairytales 'not PC enough': Parents have stopped reading traditional fairytales to their children because they are too scary and not politically correct, according to research.

Favourites such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella and Rapunzel are being dropped by some families who fear children are being emotionally damaged.

A third of parents refused to read Little Red Riding Hood because she walks through woods alone and finds her grandmother eaten by a wolf.

One in 10 said Snow White should be re-named because "the dwarf reference is not PC".

Rapunzel was considered "too dark" and Cinderella has been dumped amid fears she is treated like a slave and forced to do all the housework.

The poll of 3,000 British parents - by TheBabyWebsite.com - revealed a quarter of mothers now rejected some classic fairy tales.

And the article ends with:

Top 10 fairy tales we no longer read:

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

2. Hansel and Gretel

3. Cinderella

4. Little Red Riding Hood

5. The Gingerbread Man

6. Jack and the Beanstalk

7. Sleeping Beauty

8. Beauty and the Beast

9. Goldilocks and the Three Bears

10. The Emperor's New Clothes

So where do you fall in the controversy? There is definitely no simple answer, to put it mildly. I'm not very upset with rewriting endings. It's been done for hundreds of years in oral tradition.

And don't we all adapt our stories to fit the needs or desires of our audience? I used to regularly drive a carpool of four girls ages 8-11 and they BEGGED me to share the "scary" versions of fairy tales each and every time they got in my car. I think one of the issues is that once children start reading on their own, they don't have family storytimes anymore. I don't read Hansel and Gretel to toddlers, but I think it's a story with a lot of discussion value for the five and older set.

And I see fairy tales as valuable in providing a common experience. With the internet and other medias, so many interests are getting split and splintered over and over again. Pop music isn't as widely spread with the increase of genres, for example, or the explosion of media outlets of all forms. We're losing other common experiences like tv show theme songs. We are inundated with book titles so that only the bestsellers have a chance of being known by a decent portion of the population. Fairy tales, however, can still be part of the common experience and thus common reference. Observe their constant usage in advertising and elsewhere to see their power. Of course I think children should learn about fairy tales, but at appropriate ages and times, not the scariest ones at a 2-year-old's bedtime.