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       #Post#: 16156--------------------------------------------------
       Violence in children's books
       By: Alharacas Date: May 25, 2019, 10:44 am
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       Another thread made me wonder whether that's a peculiarly German
       thing. Most of our old children's classics are simply chock full
       of all kinds of grisly deaths and torture, both animal and
       human, from Grimm's fairy tales - the original version*, I mean,
       not the Disney one - to "Struwwelpeter" and "Max und Moritz":
  HTML https://www.ecse.rpi.edu/~schubert/Private/Literatur%20Busch%20-%20Max%20und%20Moritz.pdf
       (You don't have to understand German, the pictures speak for
       themselves.)
       *Not sure how Cinderella/Aschenbrödel works in the Disney
       version, but in the original, the bad step-sisters hack off bits
       of their feet to fit into Cinderella's shoes. The resulting
       blood bath is how the prince knows they're not the girl he's
       looking for - always found that quite strange, even as a kid. I
       mean, how about just looking at her face or something? And the
       original version of Snow White ends with the bad step-mother
       being forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she drops
       dead.
       #Post#: 16162--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Violence in children's books
       By: Nikola Date: May 25, 2019, 11:41 am
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       Czech people are very particular about fairy tales, which they
       call "pohádky". There has to be good and evil, good has to win
       and there has to be some moral. If it doesn't end well, it's not
       a pohádka. A story like Hans Christian Andersen's The Little
       Mermaid leaves Czech people very frustrated. As long as the
       story ends well, it can be pretty horrible. We've had some
       Grimm's fairy tales retold by other authors. I've heard of the
       version of Cinderella where the sisters chop off bits of their
       feet, I don't recall hearing the ending of Snow White you
       describe. We have one about Otesánek, a child that a couple who
       couldn't have children made out of a log. He's constantly hungry
       and ends up eating all their food, furniture, the entire house
       and them and then walks through the village and eats random
       people, until an old lady kills him with a hoe and frees
       everyone.
       #Post#: 16257--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Violence in children's books
       By: Alharacas Date: May 28, 2019, 12:31 pm
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       Hmm... German distinguishes between Volksmärchen and
       Kunstmärchen, the former being tales like your pohádky, the
       latter being "literary fairy tales", like the ones written by
       Andersen or Oscar Wilde. And even though Andersen isn't very
       kind to his characters, and some of Wilde's tales I find
       unbearably sad, there's none of that violence you find in
       traditional fairy tales, is there?
       I'd really like some input from somewhere else as well, please.
       Please? Chizuko, do Japanese parents tell their children fairy
       tales? And is there lots of violence in them? Sunshine? What
       about your country?
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