Skip to main content

Worlds of fairy tales

 


Book Review

Title: Beyond Fairy Tales

Authors: Deepika and Shalini

Format: PDF E-book

Fairies inhabit a world different from ours. In that world, they hold mirrors to us wherein we may see the images of our inner selves. Or sometimes we see the images we wish to see, as the authors say in this book:

The women of the globe secretly call,

To the mirror on their wall.

 

They see in themselves the beauty of Snow,

To uplift their spirit that might be lying low,

Not bothering about opinions of a friend or a foe,

They help their unique grace and enchantment grow.

Fairy tales were created at different times for different purposes. They entertain little children while teaching them certain lessons of life. They engage children creatively. Yet many of them don’t seem to be meant for children at all. This book presents us 26 fairy tales taken from various sources. The presentation is unique and that is what makes this a special book. We are given minute details about each story, its history and other background, various versions and adaptations, and related trivia as well. Moreover, there is a poem about each story too. The book can fascinate all types of readers – children and adults, beginners and scholars.

The authors interpret each story making its meaning and message clear to the reader and sometimes warning the reader about cruelty or other evils that may not be quite apt for children. Occasionally we come across subtle comments from the authors about adult issues like patriarchy too. Sample this:

OK! Now, anyone who rubbed the lamp would be the master, but not the mother of course. She is a woman. How could a genie take orders from a woman? That can’t happen so Aladdin is the master. What happens to Aladdin’s character after this? Does he realise his responsibility? No. He becomes lazier, never lifting a finger to work, but ordering the genie to do his work, from getting food to clothes everything. Talk about teaching work ethics to children. So, the story has gender bias and Aladdin is not proving to be an idol either. [Aladdin and the Magic Lamp]

In many places, the authors blow a whistle about serious moral issues involved. For instance, Aladdin’s story (cited above) ends with this paragraph:

We really need to stop here. Why are we telling this tale to our kids again? Does this story contribute in any way towards teaching them a single value that they can use in their life? This tale needs to be rewritten if at all we want to read it to our children. Include magic by all means, but improve Aladdin’s character, who remains consistently lazy, conniving and careless.

Let us take one more example. Presenting the Master Cat or Puss in Boots, the authors worry: “Yet, the cat achieves everything by cheating, lying and threatening people. Means justify the end, don’t they? But here it says, as long as you become rich and overturn your fortune, any means are justified. Basically, the Beyond Fairy Tales kids will learn that you can get away with lying if you are not caught and if lying is giving you good results, why not?”

This is not a book of fairy tales. It is an ocean of information about 26 fairy tales. Anyone who has some kind of interest in fairy tales, both children and adults, will find reading this book very rewarding. The poem added to each tale is a bonus.



PS. This book is free now here.

This book is part of The Blogchatter’s E-book carnival and my contribution to it is  LIFE: 24 Essays.

Comments

  1. UnknownJune 3, 2021 at 2:06 PM

    Thank you for your lovely words. Glad you liked it.
    Deepika

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yamini MacLeanJune 3, 2021 at 3:12 PM

    Hari OM
    Now that is an interesting take - and valid too! Thanks for bringing this one to attention, as I had not spotted it. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 3, 2021 at 4:22 PM

      I was amused by these chapters during the a2z period.

      Delete
  3. magiceyeJune 4, 2021 at 6:23 AM

    Sounds interesting. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rajeev MoothedathJune 4, 2021 at 10:41 AM

    An insightful review of a book (most of which I had read during the challenge) that can be enjoyed at various levels. As aptly observed by you, "The book can fascinate all types of readers – children and adults, beginners and scholars"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 4, 2021 at 11:10 AM

      I too had read much of it in the a2z days and was fascinated.

      Delete
  5. You Can Join the Award-Winning Web ActivityJune 22, 2021 at 5:50 AM

    Hello, Your blog contains useful content for humanity, we think it is a work that should be appreciated. You can participate in the web awards event organized by different categories among websites. In this way, you provide visitors to your web page through organic promotions about your website on the toplist, and you also strengthen your place in the channels where blogs gain effectiveness by creating your brand value with promotional evaluations and various social events. If you want to apply with your blog now, you can check the link where you can review the details and Join now.

    Mail: contact@blogaward.tk
    Join: www.webawards.tk
    Web: www.blogaward.tk

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
122 comments
Read more

Goodbye, Little Ones

They were born under my care, tiny throbs of life, eyes still shut to the world. They grew up under my constant care. I changed their bed and the sheets regularly making sure they were always warm and comfortable. When one of them didn’t open her eyes after a fortnight of her birth, I rang up my cousin who is a vet and got the appropriate prescription that gave her the light of day in just two days. I watched each one of them stumble through their first steps. Today they were adopted. I personally took them to their new home, a tiny house of a family that belongs to the class that India calls BPL [Below Poverty Line]. I didn’t know them at all until I stopped my car a little away from their small house, at the nearest spot my car could possibly reach. They lived in another village altogether, some 15 km from mine. Sometimes 15 km can make a world of difference. A man who looked as old as me had come to my house in the late afternoon. “I’d like to adopt your kittens,” he said. He...
6 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so...
39 comments
Read more