The entire role of children's literature, think Grimm's Fairy Tales!!, is to help children build resilience to the really awful stuff in the real world they will all face. Dahl's books help them work through their fears with some degree of control. We create fragile adults when we encourage fragility in our children. In real life it …
The entire role of children's literature, think Grimm's Fairy Tales!!, is to help children build resilience to the really awful stuff in the real world they will all face. Dahl's books help them work through their fears with some degree of control. We create fragile adults when we encourage fragility in our children. In real life it is certain your mom will die, and so will your dad and all the people you love will die and so will you. You will suffer. That is a certainty. You will experience joy as well of course, likely even great joy. Nevertheless life is brutal; even a blessed life has unavoidable pain and terror. We are all born pregnant with pain and suffering we will have to bear. The baby will be born. Fiction helps us manage that pain, it helps us work through our fears. The same is so for good children's literature. What we do when when cover our children's eyes to this degree is only make them suffer more deeply the inevitable pains of their lives. And, what is worse, we do not at all make their joys any more joyous either.
The entire role of children's literature, think Grimm's Fairy Tales!!, is to help children build resilience to the really awful stuff in the real world they will all face. Dahl's books help them work through their fears with some degree of control. We create fragile adults when we encourage fragility in our children. In real life it is certain your mom will die, and so will your dad and all the people you love will die and so will you. You will suffer. That is a certainty. You will experience joy as well of course, likely even great joy. Nevertheless life is brutal; even a blessed life has unavoidable pain and terror. We are all born pregnant with pain and suffering we will have to bear. The baby will be born. Fiction helps us manage that pain, it helps us work through our fears. The same is so for good children's literature. What we do when when cover our children's eyes to this degree is only make them suffer more deeply the inevitable pains of their lives. And, what is worse, we do not at all make their joys any more joyous either.