The Viking bedtime treasury Book

I absolutely love this book. Of lately--few past decades--fairy tales have gotten a bad reputation, often cited as examples of horrible role models for girls and boys. However, it seems we--modern us--are in part responsible for turning fairy tales into those kind of stories because they weren't like that originally.

In this book Bettelheim explores how deeply significant these seemingly out-of-touch with the present world stories are for children's development.

One of the things we need to understand, he says, is that in their original form, before being twisted into "clean" stories by Disney, fairy tales help children face their earliest and darkest of fears. The loss of a parent, the transfer of affection from the inner familiar circle to outside friends, the uncertainty of what awaits in the future for us.

I have a whole new sense of how fairy tales work and why they have survived through history after reading this book, and if you feel like discovering a whole new level into the complexity of these well-worn and told stories I recommend you to read this book.