I've often seen people complaining online about the "Disneyfication" of fairy tales. Cinderella originally included the stepsisters cutting off parts of their feet to fit into the slipper. The Little Mermaid originally died. That's one of the reasons that I've always enjoyed reading stories that have inspired reinterpretation over the years. Sometimes when we read the original, we find out that the story is vastly different than we once thought. Sometimes, the change is good. And sometimes it's very bad.
Here are five stories you likely know by name. Some of them are worth your time, but others deserve to be buried at the center of the Earth.
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
If this was made into a movie today, it would be closer to a crude comedy than a traditional adventure flick. There are plenty of “are you actually doing that?” moments that are far from what I’d consider appropriate for a young audience. Making big things small and small things big is a tool that Swift uses to make gross jokes. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed this book. But if you’re looking for an Indiana Jones or Robinson Crusoe style adventure, this isn’t the book for you. This is a book about a giant guy urinating on a tiny guy’s castle. Nothing more, and nothing less.
A Journey To The Center Of The Earth – Jules Verne
Even though the title of the book says “A Journey”, I think I underestimated just how much of the book would be the journeying part. I’d say that at least half of the book is literally just the characters walking deeper and deeper into the center of the earth. Sure, there are moments where they start thirsting to death or they get briefly separated, but I found that portion of the book really uninteresting. I just wanted to get to the center to figure out what wondrous things would be down there.
Spoiler alert…they don’t actually make it to the center of the earth. I found that really surprising and somewhat unsatisfying. There were certainly parts of the story that were just as fantastical and otherworldly as you’d expect, but I thought it odd that the characters actually failed in their ultimate goal.
And there’s a part where they see a GIANT MAN off in the distance and they ignore it and run away! I mean, you’re down here to DISCOVER…here’s SENTIENT HUMANOID LIFE!!! What bigger discovery were you hoping to make, you idiots?!
Two thumbs down. Deep down.
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
This was a book that I'd been wanting to read for a while. When Hally was less than a year old, I decided to read it to her in chunks. The moment I pulled it out, Jenna groaned.
"That's not a kid's book!" she protested. "You're reading that for YOU."
"It IS a kid's book," I disagreed. "And so WHAT if I'm reading it for me? She can't understand any of it anyway!"
This book was eventually adapted into a segment in Disney's "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad", which is partly why I wanted to read it. Over these next couple nights, though, I was a bit disappointed. Sure, it's about talking animals, but it's very old school in its storytelling. There were words in this that even I didn't know. And most of the humour was domestic, if that makes sense. There's a lot of animals visiting other animal's homes and commenting politely on their furniture. By the end of Chapter Five, I still hadn't seen Mr. Toad get arrested, so I gave up. If anyone can speak in defense of the next five chapters, let me know - otherwise I think this is going to sit unfinished on my shelf.
The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
I was a little disappointed that the book wasn’t all about Mowgli – there are stories that are entirely self-contained and independent of each other, with an overarching theme of order in the wild. With that in mind, the stories were interesting and I liked the “Laws of the Jungle” that Kipling had in place. Learning how the jungle works was very cool. I would have liked to see Mowgli grow up, though. When last you see him, Kipling even writes that Mowgli’s transformation into a man and the story of him eventually falling in love is “a story for another time”. I think reading this book alongside Tarzan of the Apes reveals some interesting parallels, and I even thought to myself that it would be interesting to see how the two would interact or contrast with each other.
Peter Rabbit – Beatrix Potter
I remember having many Peter Rabbit books on my family’s shelf as a child – and it’s silly, but there was a cereal bowl we had in our house that was a “Peter Rabbit” bowl, and for whatever reason, I treasured it as my cereal bowl – no one else could touch it. It had the line “Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her umbrella and went through the wood to the baker’s. She bought a loaf of brown bread” written around the border.
Anyway, there’s a lot to like about the Peter Rabbit stories. In a way, one could say that Beatrix Potter paved the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each story focuses on a different character, but every now and then an old familiar face will come in to enrich and enhance what is already a quality story. The locations and places become familiar as you read.
What surprised me about these stories is how playful they are and how grisly they are at the same time. For example, you’ll read a story about a bunch of cute little chipmunks bringing gifts to an owl so they can look for nuts on his lands – and then all of a sudden a character is seconds away from literally skinning someone alive. Potter doesn’t let you forget that these are stories about animals. Animals with clothes and etiquette, yes, but animals nonetheless.
Potter’s woodland creatures have aged very differently from Milne’s characters of the Hundred Acre Wood. They’re still charming and fun, but the tone of realism that Potter added makes me realize that what was appropriate in terms of graphic content for a children’s story back then has changed significantly in our time.