Tag / fairy tales

by booksoverlookedblog

Banned Book: Prince and Knight

Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Think of your favorite fairy tale. Were there talking animals? A handsome prince falling in love with a beautiful princess? Did it teach a lesson? 

When we’re very young, fairy tales and fables are usually our first introduction to stories. We learn a lot about narrative structure from these old tales. We learn that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories have characters and conflicts. We even learn some basic symbolism: a cottage represents safety and home, the woods represent danger, and a castle represents success. A beautiful person is good, and an ugly person is evil. These simple, familiar stories set the foundation for our understanding of narratives long before we have the ability to read one on our own. 

There are many things in traditional stories that aren’t viewed as fondly today as they once were, like beauty equating to goodness and women as prizes. There are lots of retellings of classic stories now, which often change turn the formerly helpless maiden into a certified bad-ass. Heck, the best-selling Twisted Tale series are just Disney AUs based on their popular movies.

I didn’t write my earlier post about traditional literature just because it’s one of my favorite genres (though that is true), but because I want to discuss the oft-challenged picture book, Prince and Knight, but Daniel Haack and Stevie Lewis.

Well, let’s look at this dangerous book together. I love the illustrations – bright and colorful, and perfect for a picture book. The story is also told in rhyme, which I enjoyed. Sometimes rhyming picture books can be clunky or choose awkward words to make the rhyme work, but I didn’t see any of that here. Overall, it’s nice to look at and fun to read out loud.

Prince and Knight repeats familiar fairy tale beats: a prince goes on a journey, overcomes a challenge, and is rewarded with true love. The main difference between this and stories like Sleeping Beauty is that the prince’s true love is another man. 

The story goes like this: a prince is getting ready to inherit the kingdom, but the king and queen know that it’s too much work to rule alone. They want their son to find a nice girl and get married. He meets many lovely ladies, but he doesn’t want to marry any of them. When a dragon attacks, the prince races to save the kingdom. He’s not fighting alone, either. A bold knight rushes into the battle to assist the king. They save each other’s lives, and together, capture the beast. Soon, the prince realizes that his one true love, the one he’s been searching for, is this brave knight in shining armor. The prince and the knight are married, the kingdom rejoices, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I loved Prince & Knight. There’s action, but not violence (the prince and knight tie up the dragon rather than slay it), and it has an adorable happily ever after. My favorite thing about the book might be the king and queen’s reaction to the prince falling in love with another man. They’re ecstatic that he’s found someone and don’t care that it’s not a princess, and the whole kingdom celebrates their wedding. 

Cute, right?

Unfortunately, not everyone thought so. According to the ALA Prince and Knight was one of the most frequently banned or challenged books in 2019 for “featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content; for being ‘a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children’ with the potential to cause confusion, curiosity, and gender dysphoria; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint”

Siiiigh. Let’s break this down.

Prince and Knight was published in 2018, three years after same-sex marriage became legal throughout the United States. According to Pew Research Center, a majority Americans support same-sex marriage and it’s part of the cultural landscape, whether you think it should be or not.

“Confusion” and “curiosity” are natural parts of childhood. Young kids are learning about the world and, no matter what book you read to a young child, they’re going to have questions. For an example from my own life, I was in fourth grade when I two older students – who were also my neighbors – told me that our principal was a lesbian. I’d never even heard the word “lesbian” before, and it had to be explained to me: girls who love girls. I became worried, and asked, “am I a lesbian because I love my mom?” The older girls told me that girl family members didn’t count. Later, my neighbor’s mother called my house to warn my mom that I might be asking some questions about what I’d learned that day. But I can’t remember asking any other questions about it, or even it being that big of a deal in the long run. If a child has a question about the gay marriage in the book, “Some boys fall in love with other boys” isn’t indoctrination, it’s just a true statement. And it’s not going to be as earth-shattering as you think. And while we’re not totally certain what causes gender dysphoria, you don’t get it from reading a picture book.

As far as a religious viewpoint goes…I’m pretty sure we can guess which religion the complainants are talking about. Some religious communities, like the Buddhist Churches of America and some Jewish movements have celebrated or supported same-sex marriage for decades, and many sects of Christianity do so as well now. Even the Catholic church is slooooowly becoming more accepting of same-sex couples. So this book isn’t against all religious viewpoints, just a certain one. 

At the start of this post, I talked about the role fairy tales play in our formative years. So I have a question: why is Prince and Knight indoctrination, but a story like “Sleeping Beauty” isn’t? Classic Western fairy tales are often about finding true love through magical means. The prince magically awakens a sleeping princess with a kiss; a princess kisses a frog and finds her true love; a glass slipper fits only one woman perfectly. So many stories treat the princess as a prize to be won. I would say reading only fairy tales like that introduce kids to harmful stereotypes of gender. So why aren’t tales of heterosexual love accused of indoctrinating kids? 

I love fairy tales, old and new. I am aware of the pitfalls in classic traditional stories, and I enjoy adaptations that change things up. I still think fairy tales and other traditional stories and rhymes are an important part of early literacy. But there’s a phrase I heard once that’s always stuck with me: “It’s not what you have, it’s what you don’t have.” This sums up how I feel about a lot of media diets. If you get nothing but stories with a narrow view of what the world is like, it’s going to affect how you see the world. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with traditional stories, but I think it’s important for children to see stories where the princess saves the prince, where the ugly person is kind, and where the prince and the knight find true love. 

Because in real life, girls can save boys, not-beautiful people can be kind, and two men can fall in love and marry each other. To pretend otherwise is insulting to all of those who don’t live in a fairytale.

by booksoverlookedblog

Once Upon a Time: Traditional Literature

Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Apologies for missing last week’s post; I was ill. 

I want to take a break from our regularly-scheduled book rants to talk a bit about traditional literature. The term“traditional literature” might conjure up images of stodgy old books with nigh-unreadable prose for the modern reader. But you might be surprised to learn that you’ve probably been reading traditional literature since you were a kid! Traditional literature encompasses stories and poems that have been passed down from generation to generation, such as myths, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes. 

Traditional stories rely on patterns, motifs, symbols, and tropes. These stories were passed down orally long before they were ever written down, and using those storytelling devices helped both the teller and the listener to remember the story. Familiar patterns also helped listeners participate in stories by providing clues about what will happen next. We still use many of these today, opening with “once upon a time” and ending with “and they lived happily ever after.” 

Folk traditions in storytelling are both unique and universal. Many folklore stories from across the world share the same tropes, but use the story teller’s culture as a backdrop for the tale. Compare “The Rough-Faced Girl,” “Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters,” and “The Irish Cinder Lad.” They’re all versions of the French Cinderella story, but come from the Algonquin Nation, Zimbabwe, and Ireland, respectively. 

Settings tend to be used again and again, with reliable associations. In the Anglo-European tradition, many stories start in a cottage, where simple, everyday folk live. A castle is where some aspire to be, and reaching it symbolizes success. The forest is dark, where mysterious creatures live and dangerous and unpredictable things happen. The road is where characters encounter new people and influences. This is a place where change occurs. 

Characterization relies heavily on archetypes. Each character plays a clear role: hero, villain, helper, trickster, numbskull, etc., though some characters represent more than one. In Jack and the Beanstalk, for example, Jack is both a hero and a trickster. 

Traditional stories often follow the monomyth structure, sometimes called the hero’s journey. The hero begins living a simple life at home, but problems arise that call them to go on a quest. They face challenges, meet a helper (often a mentor-figure), are validated as a hero by powerful forces, wins their prize, and changes by the end of the story. 

There are also several different types of traditional stories, such as fables, legends, folk tales, tall tales, fairy tales, and myths. Some are meant to teach lessons, such as Aesop’s fables, and others attempt to explain natural phenomena, such as winter being caused by the goddess Persephone being in Hades. 

Now that we know a little about how traditional literature works, I want to talk about its importance. Like a lot of children, I knew stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears by heart before I could even read. I didn’t just learn traditional stories from books, either. I learned them from movies (especially Disney), TV shows, songs, crafts, and my friends. Fairy tales and other forms of traditional literature are ubiquitous in early childhood. 

I don’t think it’s just because these are well-known and well-loved stories that our parents and grandparents grew up with. Nor is it that they’re in the public domain and therefore free for media companies and publishers to create work from. Both of those things play a big role in keeping traditional tales a mainstay of our culture, but I don’t think they’re the only factors. 

I think another big factor that contributes to traditional stories surviving for centuries is how concrete they are. When you look at these stories, the protagonists typically need to overcome some physical obstacle, be it a big bad wolf or a wicked step-mother. Things also tend to be black and white: either you are good, and will have a happy ending, or you are bad, and will be defeated. Some stories may have a simple moral that a child can apply to everyday life. 

Young children are very much concrete thinkers. Abstract concepts can be difficult for them to grasp. Think back to learning math when you were young. Numbers are an abstract idea, until you have something to count. For me, learning addition and subtraction was the same as adding or taking away beans from a pile. In Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development, he theorizes that children have difficulty with abstract concepts until around age 12. Until then, children understand the world in a physical way.

That means there isn’t a lot of room for nuance when it comes to stories. The characters are good or bad; they will succeed or they will fail. I once heard a preschooler, upon seeing a picture of Elsa from Frozen, say that Elsa was “mean.” Elsa went from foe to friend over the course of Frozen, but for this child, Elsa couldn’t be both. She was the bad guy at the start of the movie, and for this child, that’s where she stayed until the end. 

Traditional stories don’t really have character development, except for maybe the character learning a lesson at the end. But the nature of traditional stories is that they don’t need character development. Little Red Riding Hood having a dark night of the soul in the wolf’s belly wouldn’t add anything important to the story, and it would confuse the heck out of its young readers. 

The black-and-white, simple structures of traditional stories combined with how prominent they are in children’s lives means that the messages in those old stories means that the messages within them are very easy to ingrain in a child’s mind. 

It’s also not a huge leap to say that old fairy tales don’t always have great messages by today’s standards. Damsels in distress and beauty equating to goodness are both common examples of this.* But there are also many lovely stories that have positive messages, too. One of my favorite fairy tales since I was a kid is the Three Billy Goats Gruff, where cleverness wins the day. There’s plenty of value to be found in traditional literature, and we should be conscientious of what stories, songs, and poems we share with children today.

*I also recommend against kissing frogs.