Favorite Fairy Tale

This week's Long And Short Reviews question is "What is your favorite fairy tale or legend, and why?"

Oh I liked all of them! My favorite storybooks, as a child, were the big thick ones with lots of stories in them! And I liked collections of folklore as an adult, too.

But which is my favorite one to tell to children, now? 

Hard to say. I still do like stories; the more the merrier.

I have, however, some concerns about what some stories, if they're not balanced with other ones, may seem to be teaching children. 

I'm not especially keen on princesses who just sit around and wait to be rescued. Snow White's not so bad, because in between being sent into the woods to get "lost" and being put into coma by the magic apple, she did at least find a job. Cinderella's tolerable, because she did at least do all the chores for the stepmother. Rapunzel, just sitting around and growing an unreasonable amount of hair...? 

A pet peeve some resentful pro-boy types are now venting is the "girl power" version of the "Boy Hero" stories I hated in primary school. "Once upon a time there was a little kid just like you, with knees banged up from scrambling over a bicycle too big for you (which you insist on riding because the one that fits you won't go as fast) and great big front teeth that don't match the others, and although the kid's feet didn't reach the pedals the kid was somehow able to fly a rocket ship, and while all the adults were wringing their hands and wondering what to do, the kid saved the world." I did not think it was a compliment for adults to imagine that I'd feel empowered, or whatever, by whooppers like that.

So, try "Once upon a time there was a little kid just like you, and when that kid wanted to accomplish something, person worked hard and tried a lot of things, some more successful than others, which we don't necessarily want to discuss in detail now. Eventually person succeeded."

Consider the fable about the daydreaming goose girl. Aesop obviously did not believe in the Law of Attraction. Aesop also ran out of parchment without finishing the story, but anyone who thinks about it knows how it goes.

"

Once upon a time there was a girl who raised geese and sold the eggs. One pleasant morning in spring she was walking into town, carrying baskets of eggs in her hand and on her head, As she walked she heard some mean-mouthed person say, "There goes that poor little girl who doesn't own anything but a lot of goose eggs. 'A goose egg' is an old way to say nothing. That girl's got a lot of nothing.'"

"Maybe I have, now," she said to herself, "but what a lot of good eggs I have, and what a lot of money I'll soon have after selling them. I think I'll buy some hens today. Next week I'll have goose eggs and chicken eggs. Together their eggs ought to add up to enough money that I'll be able to buy a little wagon and rent a donkey to pull it. Then I can go to more markets and sell things I can make while I'm watching my birds. Then I'll need a bigger wagon and a horse to pull it. Then I'll buy some fine, fashionable clothes. Nobody will even recognize me. They'll think I'm rich. Then that snooty rich girl will want me to be her friend, and I'll just toss my head and say..."

Deep in her daydream, she tossed her head. The whole basket of eggs on her head fell down and smashed in the road. They splashed up and got egg on the girl's skirts. Just then a fancy carriage drawn by six white horses rolled past, and she heard the same voice say, "Oh what a mess! The poor horses! I saw that goose girl toss her head as if she were trying to lose her eggs. I wonder if something really is wrong with her brain?"

The thought of this unpleasant person having egg on all of those horses' hooves brought some comfort to the goose girl.

She went on and sold her remaining eggs. She went home and put her money under her pillow, and spent the next week attending to her geese. Then she cleaned out her baskets, flled them with eggs, and took them back into town. This time she was more mindful of what she was doing, and didn't break a single egg, Now she was able to buy three hens. So her plans to earn more money proceeded. 

Whether she even remembered the poor little rich girl by the time she could afford her fine new clothes, I don't know, nor do I care. That is the sort of detail somebody like Gregory McGuire might add to a story if he was trying to make a novel out of it. Anyway she went on working, saving, and investing, and when she was old enough she married a nice hardworking young man, and they lived prosperously ever after.

"