Importance of Fairy Tales

Fairy tales are one of my favorite genres to read, I love the magic, the mystery and the thought that these stories have been passed down through the generations. I love reading fractured fairy tales, different spins on old classics and modern re-tellings. I came across a few articles on Brightly that discuss fairy tales and wanted to add my own take.

Hear what Liesl Shurtliff, a middle grade author of fairy tales talk about the importance of taking fairy tales seriously, how fairy tales look simple from the outside, but when you really dig deep you find more questions than answers and maybe even some answers to questions you didn’t know you had.

Check out Melissa Taylor’s ten reasons why it’s important to read non-Disney fairy tales. Simple reasons like life lessons, more difficult reasons like cultural appreciation and scary in a safe context and more importantly – princesses don’t have dress codes that require them to wear pink.
And last (but certainly not least) – if you’re like me and believe that the fairy tales you know are mostly from Europe, you’d be surprised to find how many variations there are of the same story across the world. Lon Po Po is similar to Red Riding Hood in China, The Rough-Faced Girl is an Algonquin Cinderella story and The Talking Eggs is a Creole inspired fairy tale from Louisiana. You won’t want to miss this list of great multicultural fairy tales and if you stop by your local library, you’ll find even more great titles!