Four key points for reading fairy tales with children

When reading fairy tales to children in a literary reading mood, you need to pay attention to the following basic points:

1. Stories are just stories:

Many people are accustomed to "matching characters" when reading literature, and this tendency is more obvious when reading stories to children. For example, we often hear adults advising children that someone in a story did this and that, and they ask their children to do the same. This is a way to interpret a story, but as a literary reading, always doing this is not necessarily a good thing, and it can even be said to be a bit bad. Almost everyone knows the story of "Cinderella", but there are probably very few women who can turn themselves into "Cinderella waiting to be rescued by the prince". Today, although we may not agree with the character and life orientation of the protagonist, the story of Cinderella is still beautiful. Because “a story is a story”, experts in reading stories know how to “jump out” of the story, and also know how to guide children to jump out of it.

Only by learning to keep a distance can you better appreciate the story. There is good and beauty in the story, as well as evil and ugliness, and they are all precious experiences in life. If you don’t know ugliness, you won’t understand beauty. From the perspective of literary appreciation, the more realistic the ugliness and evil in the story (if they are unavoidable) are, the more perfect the story will be. And in fairy tales, the children eventually land safely.

On the premise of fully considering the children's intellectual and emotional receptive abilities, I think there is no need to deliberately avoid the seemingly dark side of fairy tales. At the same time, there is no need to turn stories into morals, nor to use stories to teach morals. Stories are just stories, and truly good stories have powerful moral power in themselves.

2. The importance of language:

Fairy tales are literary, and literature is expressed through language. When we read fairy tales to children, we are also helping them enjoy and learn literary language. Truly outstanding fairy tale masters are often also masters of language. The Grimm brothers, who collected and compiled Grimm's Fairy Tales, were linguists themselves. Chinese and foreign writers who have created classic fairy tales for children, such as Andersen, Dickens, Carroll, Wilde, Graham, Porter, Lindgren, White, Dr. Seuss, Ende, Jansson, Dahl, Ba Jin, Bing Xin, Zhang Tianyi, Ye Shengtao, Chen Bochui, Sun Youjun, etc., all have profound skills in language and understand children's psychology very well. I have always stubbornly advised adults, when reading fairy tales to children, to choose the original works (including good translations of the original works) as much as possible, and to use less stripped-down rewrites and abridged versions.

3. Importance of pictures:

In addition to cultivating children's visual thinking ability intuitively, the greatest function of pictures in children's reading is pleasure. It makes it easy for children to accept and gain literary and artistic influence unconsciously. When reading fairy tales to children, try to choose reading books with good illustrations, and it is best to choose real picture books. A true picture book is not a book with text accompanied by illustrative illustrations. The pictures in a picture book can tell stories themselves. The narrative of text and the narrative of pictures each have their own advantages and are irreplaceable and complement each other.

(IV) Importance of selecting the best:

The purpose of reading books, including fairy tales, to children is to help them develop a habit of reading and maintain their passion for reading. Generally speaking, children should be given enough freedom to choose when it comes to reading. But childhood is very short, and children are not born reading experts, so adults should try their best to choose excellent works for their children and gradually cultivate their ability to choose the best.

Due to the shortcomings of their childhood, many adults lack the experience of reading fairy tales. Apart from knowing Grimm's Fairy Tales and Andersen's Fairy Tales, they know almost nothing about the outstanding works of children's literature in China and abroad. In fact, this is a very vast and beautiful world. There are countless classic fairy tales from both China and abroad, and excellent fairy tales in the form of picture books have also formed a very grand trend in the world today. Today's children are so happy! As long as we adults can reflect calmly and learn with an open mind, we can find countless treasures from this beautiful world.