How Baby

One of Momo’s favorite books right now is an anthology of traditional fairy tales, and WOW, boy, do I ever have to do some heavy editing on them while I read. We’re deep in ‘twelve-year-old princesses of astounding beauty marrying the first boy they ever kissed because he happened to be a prince’ territory here; can’t stop, there’s extremely problematic content here.

Even the stuff I don’t edit out, like, there’s a story about a witch who asks a man to go into a well and bring her something, and he can have the rest of the treasure, but he kills her and takes her thing instead? So we had to have a talk about how he didn’t need to kill the woman just because the book described her as a ‘witch’, especially when she was offering fair compensation for his labour.

I’m dying to replace this collection with another one, with a little bit more modern sensibilities. No more children getting married, would be a good first start. Does anyone have any favorites?