The Bosler Alley: Children & StoryTelling

Children and Storytelling

Why it Is So Important for Adults

By, Susan Morgan Bosler, Susan is a columnist for ThePlebianRag and writes a monthly column with us, check out TheBoslerAlley for more articles.

He couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: “to Harry Potter — the boy who lived!” (Rowling, 1997)

This month the next movie installment of the Harry Potter Series/Books is being released. If you have only known Harry and all his cohorts and enemies through the movies then you have missed a lot! The books are so detailed and so more complete and complex, that I am sure if I had not read them, I would have been lost and/or bored through most of the later movies. If you enjoy fantasy and have not read the books by J.K.Rowling, do yourself a favor and read them or at very least, get them on cd and listen to them being read. Wonderful stuff!

Before we become adults we are, of course, children. What we also are is developing into the person we will become. Many different activities aid in child development – play, fantasy, learning through observation and repetition, and of course learning through imagination. This is where literature comes in, and where we as adults are not so different from our child selves. In honor of the New Harry Potter Movie being released this month, I wish to focus upon where we writers and readers began our love of the written word – and so, I return us now to the beginning

Fantasy, Fairy Tales and Stories


Depending upon the age and development of the individual child, fantasy, fairy tales and children’s stories, can represent different things, events, and emotions at different times in the developmental stages of the life of a child (and adult). The fantasy and fairy tales of Cinderella, Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Hansel and Gretel; stories such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, for a five year old are a very different tales to an eight year old and even more different to a twelve year old. Think of reading any fantasy book at the age of twenty and then again at the age of thirty! Nuances and subtlety is usually lost on a young child at an early stage of development, and the relationships between characters might be very black and white. However, to an older child and adult who can perceive the gradations of many shades of grey, the stories can take on greater depths and meanings. Among other things, these kinds of stories teach the maturing child that life presents many choices, at times circumstances can be very difficult and harsh, evil exists in the world, (but) there can be justice, people we love die or leave us, people are attracted to other people and fall in love, even the meekest can overcome most villains, witches and giants, and there are challenges that must be met in order for one to “live happily until the end of their days.”

As most parents will attest, a child often times picks a fairy tale or story that they will ask to read or hear over and over again. This might go on for months before the story is finally abandoned for another. A child picks a story to which he/she can relate. As adults we might not realize what about the story is holding the child’s attention and often a child can not articulate the association. (Bettelheim, 1975)

Fantasy, fairy tales and stories are utilized differently by adult and child. Basically, story telling is and seemingly always has been a long-standing method of teaching and entertaining. Fantasy, fairy tales and stories that are directed toward children, usually by adults, are used to teach lessons, often moral in nature. But, children learn more than just right from wrong from this art form; they also learn about and (hopefully) explore their inner (psychological, social and cognitive) strengths and weaknesses. According to Kieran Egan, a “cognitive-school” educator and writer, “stories can help young people develop associations with heroes and heroines with qualities such as courage, ingenuity, patience and power. Building positive associations with power can be of great benefit to young people’s interest in detail, and demonstrating cause-and-effect relationships.” (Erickson, 1995).

What can fantasy, fairy tales and stories do for children that children can not gain elsewhere? They “address a child’s psychological development and express in symbols the inner turmoil, anxieties, and struggles that have been seen as typical” in the various cycles of development (Davison, 2002, p. 83). Adults use these stories to teach and entertain while children use these stories to comprehend and understand the outer world and their inner worlds, whether or not they are aware that they are using the symbols that are found in the tales and the tale(s) themselves in such a manner.

The Story Writ Just for Children? – The XXX Origins of Fairytales!


Who invented the fairy tale? Folklorists contend that in truth, fairy tales were not written just for children. Their history is long and obscured in the distant past, at times perhaps into the early Middle Ages, when most if not all storytelling was oral in nature.

“Originally conceived of as adult entertainment, fairy tales were told at social gatherings, in spinning rooms, in the fields, and in other settings where adults congregated–not in the nursery.” (Cashdan, 1995, p. 6). Because fairy tales were originally told to entertain adults many encompass episodes of rape, voyeurism and other sexual perversions to which no parent would ever knowingly expose their child. “One (early) version of Little Red Riding Hood has the heroine do a striptease for the wolf before jumping into bed with him. In an early rendering of The Sleeping Beauty, the prince ravages the princess in her sleep and then departs, leaving her pregnant. And, in The Princess Who Couldn’t Laugh, the heroine is doomed to a life of spinsterhood because she inadvertently views the private parts of a witch.” (Cashdan, 1995, p. 6).

How did all this change? The change apparently developed because of several events: (1) the advent of printing and publishing for profit; (2) the new literacy of children; and (3) the socio-cultural change of beginning to view childhood, and thereby children differently then they had ever been viewed before. The change over was slow. “In 1744 John Newbery ( 1713-67) opened his firm in London at the Bible and Crown and published his first children’s book, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book , establishing in a stroke, as tradition has it, the juvenile book trade and children’s literature in England.” (Jackson, 1989 p. 1). There were other small books and works that had already been published, but there had not been any other publishing houses that were dedicated to children’s works. In fact, folklorists do not agree upon the origins of folktales or fairy tales. “But there is widespread agreement that Red Riding Hood arose from an oral tradition that predated the first written version by Charles Perrault in 1697. A French historian emphasizes that “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge” is unquestionably one of the tales that most faithfully preserves the oral tradition in Perrault’s collection” (Teasley, 1995). “In 1823 John Harris published The Court of Oberon; or, Temple of the Fairies, with tales of Mother Goose (Perrault), Mother Bunch (d’Aulnoy), and assorted popular tales, nicely if conventionally illustrated. The same year C. Baldwin brought out German Popular Stories. Translated from the Kinder und Haus Marchen. Collected by M. M. Grimm, 2 vols. (1823-26), illustrated with an appropriately eccentric(sic) verve and eeriness(sic) by George Cruikshank. His illustrations of 1825 for the first English edition of Victor Hugo’s Ham of Iceland (Paris, 1823; London: J. Robins) evince the same spirit.” (Jackson, 1989. p 219).

Whatever their origin, children were now formally exposed to written stories with child characters caught up in problems, dilemmas, cruelties, adventures and circumstances that were often larger than life. They faced a world of hideous monsters, abandonment, starvation, cannibalism and torture. But these characters endured, and if they did not live through the quest, then they were entreated to paradise (if they were good) or hell (if they were evil). There were tales about evil witches, good fairy god-mothers, enchanted frogs, kings and queens, good parents and bad, good siblings and horrible ones, devils and angels, etc. In a world without television, movies and video games, these stories must have seemed shocking and bizarre, wondrous and frightening, appealing and repulsive all at the same time. “There, they (children) encounter and explore the great existential mysteries and profound enigmas of the adult world. What better tool, as the child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim has suggested, for learning how to navigate reality and for figuring out how to survive in a world ruled by adults?”(Tartar, 2003 p. xviii).

Stories such as Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rumpelstilskin, and on and on, were for most children their initiation into the world of “what if?” What if I had to take care of myself? What if I had to save my family from disaster? What if there was a monster and it wanted to eat me? What if these were not my real parents? What if I got lost and had to find my way back home? The world of make believe with impossible characters became for most children a world of conjecture, problems and solutions.

Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment Theories Explored


Bruno Bettelheim of the psychoanalytic perspective (Freudian/Jungian) wrote The Uses of Enchantment, the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, in 1975. The book presents a unique approach to understanding how important fantasy, fairy tales and stories are in the lives of children. Bettelheim writes: “Today, as in times past, the most important and also the most difficult task in raising a child is helping him to find meaning in life.” (Betttelheim, 1975, p. 3).

According to Bettelheim there are many good reasons to allow children to delve into the realm of fantasy and fairy tale. A major theme that runs through fairy tales is that of transcendence. Children are reassured by positive outcomes to seemingly insurmountable circumstances. Just when all seems lost, Cinderella is found by her Prince and her foot fits into the tiny glass slipper. Through this concept of transcendence a child comes to learn that things change. Life’s troubles and hardships do not last. “Just because his life is often bewildering to him, the child needs even more to be given the chance to understand himself in this complex world with which he must learn to cope.” (Bettelheim, 1975 p. 5). It is through fairy tales that the child can find this meaning.

Bettelheim purposed that for a child to “master narcissistic disappointments, oedipal dilemmas, and sibling rivalries” (Bettelheim, 1975 p. 7) let go of dependencies, find independence and selfhood and learn about himself, a child needs to daydream and fantasize. Fairy tales, in Bettelheim’s view offers children “new dimensions” to explore with imagination, enabling a child to ultimately find himself, and not only himself but also his place in the world. “Before a child can come to grips with reality, he must have some frame of reference to evaluate it.” (Bettelheim, 1975 p 117).

Bettelheim reflects that in fairy tales evil is as present and good. Heros much make a choice to either side with one or the other and this promotes the teaching of morality by choice rather than lecture, it is the child who identifies with the hero draws the conclusion that the hero made the correct choice to overcome evil. “Presenting the polarities of character, permits the child to comprehend easily the differences between the two . . .” (Bettelheim, 1975 p.9).

Through fairy tales and stories such as Harry Potter, a child can learn to cope with the inner struggles of isolation and loneliness; the abandonment or death of loved ones; sibling rivalry; separation anxiety and having to go out into the world; and other critical issues that children face. “While it entertains the child, the fairy tale enlightens him about himself, and fosters his personality development. It offers meaning on so many different levels, and enriches the child’s existence in so many ways, that no one book can do justice to the multitude and diversity of the contributions such tales make to the child’s life.” (Bettelheim, 1975, p 12).

Bettelheim analyzes the tale of Hansel and Gretel demonstrating that for one stage of development, when a child is about to set out into the world, it explores the issues of separation anxiety and reassures the child that in the end, it is the children who are triumphant over the scheming witch or the evil wizard. At another stage of development, a child’s fears of inadequacies are allayed by Hansel’s triumph in gaining the freedom and independence of her and her brother after defeating the witch (adult) who held them prisoners.

In the case of Harry Potter, “children identify with Harry Potter, a truly endearing character, not only because he’s a child, but also because he’s a wizard and has all those magical powers. We can imagine kids fantasizing about being Harry, magically powerful, good, brave, and famous. Children are used to being under adult control, deprived of many freedoms and privileges; hence the enticement of being made powerful with magic. Though the adult-child relationship in Harry Potter is still an unequal, hierarchical one, some of the child characters are given much more freedom and responsibility than in real life. Witness the last part of The Prisoner of Azkaban, where Dumbledore actually gives Hermione and Harry the responsibility to save Buckbeak and Sirius. It’s a dangerous path to send children on, but he trusts them and they live up to his trust. All this is very heady material for children. No wonder they love it.(“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” 2001, p. 746)

“Each fairy tale is a magic mirror which reflects some aspects of our inner world, and of the steps required by our evolution from immaturity to maturity.” (Bettelheim, 1975 p. 309). In fact, in Bettelheim’s opinion, the fairy tale becomes like a “quiet pool” that initially reflects our image and then allows us (as child and adult) to uncover our soul’s depths and find meaning within and without. Perhaps it is good to remember that within each adult is still the soul of a child wanting to know more.

References and Further Reading

Abrahamson, C. E. (1998). Storytelling as a Pedagogical Tool in Higher Education. Education, 118(3), 440+.

Bettelheim, Bruno. (1975) The Uses of Enchantment . NewYork:Random House.

Black, S. (2003). Harry Potter: A Magical Prescription for Just about Anyone. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 46(7), 540+. Retrieved October 5, 2004, from Questia database, http://www.questia.com.

Brandell, J. R. (2000). Of Mice and Metaphors: Therapeutic Storytelling with Children. New York: Basic Books.

Carpenter, C. H. (1996). Enlisting Children’s Literature in the Goals of Multiculturalism. Mosaic (Winnipeg), 29(3), 53+. Retrieved October 5, 2004, from Questia database, http://www.questia.com.

Cashdan, S. (1999). The Witch Must Die The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales. New York: Basic Books.

Chase, R., & Teasley, D. (1995). Little Red Riding Hood: Werewolf and Prostitute. The Historian, 57(4), 769+. Retrieved October 5, 2004, from Questia database, http://www.questia.com.

Erickson, M. (1995, March). Why Stories?. School Arts, 94, 38+.

Frank, A. J., & Mcbee, M. T. (2003). The Use of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to Discuss Identity Development with Gifted Adolescents. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 15(1), 33+.

Jackson, M. V. (1989). Children’s Literature in England from Its Beginnings to 1839 Children’s Literature in England from Its Beginnings to 1839. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Jones, G. (2002). Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, and Make-Believe Violence. New York: Basic Books.

Showalter, E. (1999, February 26). The Classic Fairy Tales. New Statesman, 129, 52+.

Wardetzky, K. (1990). The Structure and Interpretation of Fairy Tales Composed by Children. Journal of American Folklore , 103(408), 157-176.

Wendorf, T. A. (2002). Greene, Tolkien and the Mysterious Relations of Realism and Fantasy. Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, 55(1), 79+.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 44(8), 746. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. (2001).

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