Perrault Fairy Tales

Title: Perrault Fairy Tales, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Tom Thumb, Blue Beard, PussinBoots

 Author: Charles Perrault

Publisher: Clarion Books

Date: 1983

Number of pages: 156 pages

Reading level: 9 and Up

Genre: Fairy Tales

Summary:  

Many of these stories were well-known to people in Perrault’s time, but they had never been written down. These were stories told orally (which means spoken out loud), around the fire or at bedtime, to entertain and teach children. Some stories that Perrault wrote down were popular all over Europe, and some also written down later in Germany as Grimm Fairy Tales. If it were not for writers like Charles Perrault, many of these stories would have been lost to us. 

 

The few fairy tales I did read paid close attention to detail, as well as violence. In Little Red Riding Hood the little girl is stalked by a big bad wolf who later eats her up when she visits her sick  grandma. Although there is no gory bloody details like some of the other assigned Fairy Tale readings, Perrault instills an odd gruesome factor into his stories. Like Tom Thumb, the Ogre murders his seven daughters by slicing their throats in the middle of the night. In Blue Beard, he murders all his wives, and when his new wife finds all the wives hanging in a closet, he tells her it is her time to die. 

Perrault has a way of telling the story, and interpreting the moral value. In this book, after each Fairy Tale, Perrault included a small poem interpreting the moral and theme of the story. For Little Red, he said the moral is for girls is, "not to learn your way, don't stop to make new friends, because you'll never know how it ends". This for example, shows that Perrault wanted his audience to know and realize the significance and purpose behind his writings. 

My reaction: I liked this book very much. Not only did it share the classic fairy tales but it shared the meanings behind them as well. I feel it's easier to use his fairy tales as a teaching tool if you can also share the enlightenment from the Author of the writing. A writers intent can be speculated and interpreted in many different ways, but it makes it much more simple if you can hear it straight from their mouths what they wanted and intended by sharing their literary works.

Potential Problems: Violence, Blood, distracting detail.

My recommendation: Although the book is written and evaluated for an audience 9 and up, due to the violence I would recommend not sharing them in public schools as the violence and disturbance can offend many children. The book could be better utilized in upper level educations such as High School or General college courses.