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A couple of weeks ago I attended a Home School conference with four of my best girlfriends. It was a soul-filling weekend to say the least and an inspiring time for me, as a homeschooling Mom. As my boys are getting older, and one of them in particular bares a voracious appetite for books, I am always searching for good literature with which to feed them.
I had the distinct pleasure of sitting in on a session at the conference, that spoke to the value of fairy tales for children. When I say fairy tales, I should clarify that the speaker, Andrew Pudewa spoke in favor of genuine fairy tales in their original form, not the disneyfied versions that have completely wrecked most of the original story lines.
This session specifically focused on how children, through their consumption of literature, begin to form their core beliefs about the world and truth and right and wrong. He spoke the the everlasting value of fairy tales because the morality in fairy tales is so clear. The stories present good characters as good, (even as they are humanly flawed), and bad characters as thoroughly bad, and–good always wins.
In our broken, sin-sick world, we easily forget that good wins. Jesus died and rose again. Victory is His–and ours through Him. <–Tweetable, yes?
Children’s literature depicts a moral order that is consistent with the concept of natural law in Western civilization, and consonant with the Ten Commandments. Lying cheating, killing and stealing are always immoral. Pride envy, wrath and avarice are still deadly sins. Dr. Mitchell Kalpakgian
During his talk, Mr. Pudewa recommended the book, Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature
Last night, I sat down to read through some of the book and barely made it through the preface without highlighting the entire thing. It’s that good. One of my favorite quotes,
In a materialistic, hedonistic culture that flattens reality into the physical, the temporary, and the material, children’s literature evokes and original Paradise before Pandora opened the box and a country at the back of the North Wind which children visit in their dreams. (Preface, Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature
I am overwhelmed by the beauty and wisdom with which this book is written, and look forward to reading it thoroughly, and no doubt returning to it again and again.
It feels a little strange to speak so highly of a book I have not yet read in its entirety, but if the preface and first chapter are any indication of the rest of the book, I no doubt will stand by my recommendation when I have finished reading it.
What are your thoughts on Fairy Tales, and Children’s Literature?
What are you reading right now?
, by Margaret Feinberg.
