Years ago, during a trip to the post office, our 4-year-old son introduced himself to a little girl near his own age. Within five minutes of meeting, he was inviting her over to play and kissing her on the cheek. Always an extrovert, it was time for him to learn some social boundaries.
Later that week I picked up a copy of The Gingerbread Man from the library and settled in for some classic story time. I hoped the tale of the energetic cookie who ran away from the the farmer’s wife and looked for help from a hungry fox would help him develop a healthy distrust of strangers.
As the story goes, the gingerbread man accepts a fox’s offer to ferry him across the river in order to escape the pursuing farmer. Nearing the middle of the river, the little cookie trusts the fox one more time, moving up to his snout to avoid getting wet. True to form, the fox throws his head back, opens his jaws, and—GULP!—swallows the cookie whole.
Just when I hoped our boy was catching the moral—regardless of what they promise, foxes will be true to their nature and loyal to their stomachs; and those who trust foxes are fools—I noticed we weren’t at the end of the story. I turned the page and there they were, words that qualified this book as a “retelling” for modern ears:
But don’t be sad, for that wasn’t the end of the gingerbread man.
The gingerbread man has gone away,
But he’ll be back some other day.
For gingerbread men return, it’s said.
When someone bakes some gingerbread.
In other words, it’s OK that the cookie trusted the wily fox because gingerbread rejuvenates itself every time the farmer’s wife bakes cookies. But trusting wily actors doesn’t end this way in real life.
Not only did the fox betray the cookie, the book betrayed me. I wanted our son to ask hard questions like “What happened to the gingerbread man?” “How will he get out of the fox’s mouth?” “Why did the fox eat him?” My whole reason for choosing this story was to teach our son to be cautious when dealing with people you’ve just met. I wanted him to understand that trust is something that must be earned.
Whoever published this book wanted to blunt the edges. But in doing so, they silenced the tough questions. They changed the ending and ruined the moral.
If you think me harsh for wanting the original ending, consider the Brothers Grimm. They’re vaguely remembered for their fairy tales, among them Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, and Red Riding Hood. But the Disneyfied versions of their stories area far cry from the originals where naughty children meet an untimely end. What place could gruesome stories possibly have in the nursery? A dear friend from Norway told me that in her country parents have long told such stories to their children in order to frighten them away from harm. Believing evil fairies lurked in the wooded ponds near her home saved her from wading into them and drowning.
Whether it’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Tikki Tikki Tembo, or Aesop’s Fables, don’t overlook the power of stories to shape your children’s moral imagination. Just be sure to get the originals.