It's always so weird looking through older childrens books
This is one that my grandma gave to me when I was little (that's been used a LOT since I'm the oldest of nine lol. Most of the stories in the book are from before the 1940s). As a child I didn't find it weird at all that the father was forcing his young daughter to sleep with the creepy boy frog but now I read it and am just like... "Why?" 😂
By no means all mid-20C children's stories were like that; and you cannot sweep centuries of many countries' various traditions up in one bundle.
Those written from that time onwards certainly weren't; but you have to remember that if your experience of the much older, European-tradition fairly-stories was out of Disney pseudo-sentimentality by Victorian mawkishness, that is nothing like the originals!
My parents had kept a compendium published in the 1930s, that included some translations, with graphic illustrations, of some of [i]Der Struwwelpeter[/i] poems written in Germany in 1845. They were morality-tales aimed at children, making their point by absurd levels of hyperbole - and some were really horrible.
Looking that title up simply to verify the spelling, I found [i]Der Strewwelpeter[/i], translated, is apparently still in print, rather surprisingly perhaps. Though they are most certainly [i]not[/i] the "MERRY STORIES AND FUNNY PICTURES" - in capital letters - that Frederick Warne & CO, New York, tries to claim. Unless you think that as I remember happens in one of them, it is "merry and funny " to have your fingers amputated by a supernatural figure with a giant pair of scissors.
@ArishMell wow, and awesome! thanks for the info. I love in depth knowledge, and we must make allowances for what once was normal, and now is not. Ythanks for all this!
@ArishMell they do. This can be said of many of the big minds of the past. But i hold that we cannot condem, the past, especially since many worked so hard to advance, Jefferson, the slave owner gave us,"all men are created equal" i will not toss him out because of his adherance to the normal of the day.
@Dshhh I think you are right. The 19C saw a lot of cruelty of which much was based on what we now see as ignorance; but as you say, many even then did recognise the wrongs and strove to right them.
SW-User
This is not just "before the '40s". It's one of the famous Grimm's fairytales, most of them, if not all, have their roots in medieval Europe. Which makes it "normal" to be creepy.
@Picklebobble2 for sure. My favorite when I was little was the Velveteen Rabbit, which was much tamer than some. But even then, they basically said that all toys were alive, and at the end a bunch had to be burned because the little boy who owned them got sick. I didn't catch on that it meant they would die as a toddler, but by around five I was like "wait a second..."😂
