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Part of me is curious to read a book with such a title however I am not sure I should.
We would never have a book with that name in our house ever.
I don't use the F word. No one in my family does. (OK Maybe at the end of Super Bowl XLIII.) But if someone gave it to me I wouldn't be offended. I can even see me re-gifting it to a parent of a toddler who I think would appreciate the message. This book could be one of those things that makes the rounds among friends. Like a fruit cake!
What do you think? Do you agree with Zacharias, who says:
I do have to object with her next sentence, which is:
To me, that's just schmaltz. I grew up reading fairy tales, among other books, and I still have all the collections I had when I was a kid. I'm sure many people have read the Brothers Grimm and their grisly tales, which only resemble the happy Disney movies we all have watched. Villains were always being rolled downhill in barrels full of spikes or thrown into pits of vipers. Earlier Cinderella stories do not end happily for the stepsisters, whose eyes are picked out by birds.
What do you think about this book? Hilarious and satirical or vulgar and unfunny? What do you think about Zacharias's statement (in the video) that, "I'll admit that I don't understand the level of frustration that would propel a parent, any parent, to think in that terminology toward children. ... I think that there's a coarseness in our society today that has reached a level of just unprecedented coarseness"?
Haven't read the book or the article yet, so I'll just comment on the general topic you've laid out:
Nursery rhymes have been cruel, sadistic, torturous, macabre, dark, and basically freakish for centuries. Consider:
Peter Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn't keep her
Put her in a pumpkin shell
and there he kept her very well.
Moral: encourages men to bury their wives alive.
And:
Rockabye baby on the tree top
when the wind blows the cradle will rock
when the bough breaks the cradle will fall
and down will come baby cradle and all
Moral: sadism against infants is fun.
How about Red Riding Hood, which has overtones of sexual abuse and women, helpless victims, as romantic figures.
Or Three Little Pigs, depicting more victimization by bullies who get away with the deed and are only stopped by someone stronger than they are.
We have been brought up on these tales and poems, our religions are rife with stories of violation of the absolute worst kind (oh hai i'm god u gots plague + fire + gnats + i kill ur 1st born til u let teh hebrews go lolol).
Personally, I find vulgarities to be vulgar, and totally not necessary to teach children. However, I find the whole idea of forbidding vulgarity hypocritical, considering the kind of "morality" contained in Mother Goose, Brothers Grimm, and most of the fairy tales (ugly women are evil, pretty women are good - let's REALLY drive that home with Cinderella and Snow White, hmm?)
Edited to add: I swear like a truckdriver, in several different languages including greek, yiddish, spanish, english, and french. I still don't use the words/phrases in front of children. It just isn't necessary.
I got it for my wife for her birthday, we both got a good laugh and passed it around the table to the grandparents and other people who all thought it was hysterical. Anyone who says they never had such thoughts cross their mind while raising a determined toddler is lying.
It's very tongue-in-cheek and written to be the internal thoughts of the father as he proceeds to go through the machinations of putting his child to sleep in a very "good" parent way. Sorry to say Zacharia, but even the best of us get flustered and frustrated and think those kinds of things when we are stumbling around sleep deprived just wanting a few minutes to spend with our significant other by ourselves.
My favorite part was the beeping microwave...been there, done that.
Hansel and Gretel, Anon. Children abandoned by their parents. Put into an iron cage by a cannibal witch who tries to pop them into the oven.
There's one I DID NOT read to my children.
Have you ever checked out the original German versions of some of the popular fairy tales?
They don't exactly have happy endings...you get the idea that they were designed to keep kids from wandering off the farm in Bavaria lest they be eaten by wolves.
Have you ever checked out the original German versions of some of the popular fairy tales?
They don't exactly have happy endings...you get the idea that they were designed to keep kids from wandering off the farm in Bavaria lest they be eaten by wolves.
Have you ever checked out the original German versions of some of the popular fairy tales?
They don't exactly have happy endings...you get the idea that they were designed to keep kids from wandering off the farm in Bavaria lest they be eaten by wolves.
Excellent point - I've read the German, French and Russian version of a number of fairy tales - even worse than the Disney version in terms of life lessons and sheer level of gore.
I loved those stories - the one that always gave me nightmares though, was the part in the Wizard of Oz when the Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow diguise themselves and join with the soldiers. The whole Oh-Eee-Oh...Eee-oh-yo! thing. To this day, that scene gives me the heebiejeebies.
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Like a fruit cake!
