Evolving Traditions

My mother is a lover of books. She read to me every day from a blue hard cover anthology of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. It is where I learned about Jack Sprat and Little Miss Muffet. I imagined what a gingerbread house might look like or a wolf dressed in a granny’s nightgown. I wondered why Snow White was so desperately needy.

When I was little there was no real children’s literature. The Brothers Grimm were the gold standard.

But by the time my own children were born there were high quality contemporary children’s books everywhere—even at Cosco. My children learned quiet lessons from the hungry caterpillar and Alexander’s very bad day. We bore anxiety over the wild things. We learned the perils of taking too much from the giving tree. We said Good night Moon!

And on Father’s day this year while we (my husband, my three daughters, one of their boyfriends and myself) were enjoying a glass of chianti on the patio, someone brought up the fate of Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo—a character from a prized children’s book. And my three girls and the boyfriend went into a full on analysis of the story—way more rigorous than my book group would ever delve into.

They concluded that message of the book was that family traditions need to adapt to a changing world. It’s why poor Tikki Tikki Tembo nearly drowned and barely recovered from his fall into the well—his elders had mindlessly perpetuated rules imposed by previous generations. The old ways may not be best.

And at that moment two things occurred to me—the first and lesser of which was that these four twenty-something year olds understood a profound message from a book none of them had read since they were about five or six years old. But the second and more meaningful thought was that  I had understood their concluded message way before I had ever read the story—I had adapted family traditions in the face of a changing world. I read to my children as my mother had done for me, but I had  abandoned the nursery rhymes and fairy tales and replaced them with contemporary works—ones that were not just more easily understood by children, but had a better, more lasting message.

Because children’s books are no longer just for children anymore.

And in the new movie The Huntsmen the screenwriters finally give Snow White a much needed makeover. They recognized that society has evolved and hence the storyline must adapt and progress too. No one finds a helpless dependent woman attractive anymore.  In today’s world a man’s kiss isn’t the sole solution to a lost woman’s problems—it’s merely encouragement for a woman to actualize her own potential.  And Snow White can defeat the queen herself and lead her own army to get her kingdom back. She has evolved.