Which children stories have passed the test of time providing good moral teachings?
The Boy Who Cried Wolf – a little brutal, the whole town getting eaten by a wolf and all at the end. But still a good moral. And if you sweeten it up just a little bit it still helps teach kids the importance of honesty and times not to make jokes. Cinderella – a true love will see your beauty whether you’re in rags or ball gowns. And you can’t let the wicked stepsisters in your life keep you down. The Scorpion and the Frog- so goes the moral, “I’m a scorpion; it’s my nature”. Ah, the valuable lesson that peoples’ natures can’t really change. Trust your gut, not what other people want you to believe. Kind of a jaded tale, but isn’t it true? Poor frog. Rumplestiltskin – Ok, here’s the deal kids, never, NEVER make a bargain that you can’t/won’t uphold. And if you do, employ all sneaky tricks you can to get yourself out of it. The Ugly Duckling – Don’t discount us highschool dorks. Laughing when we ask you to the prom is rude. And someday we’ll be hot, successful women while the skanky ch
And it’s so good that Pink Floyd names one of their albums after one of its chapters. I’m also partial to Winnie the Pooh stories, but only the original A.A. Milne stories. One often overlooked in such things is Beatrix Potter, whose animal stories are weird for their mixture of animals into late 19th century British life, almost to the point of cannibalism in some of the stories (or at least the intended consumption of a creature one previously was conversing with.) Beatrix Potter had the self-referential ironic 100 years before it was popular.
