Amy gets to choose three bedtime stories to be read to her before she goes to sleep. Usually at least one of these is an Apple Tree Farm Story, which she must be close to being able to recite from memory – I know I certainly am. She also has a “special story†where I basically recite back to her what she has done during the day. The story usually starts out: “Once upon a time there was a little girl called Amy Hughes. She lived in a house with her Mummy, and her Daddy, and her two dogs called Holly and Bryn. One day Amy wanted to …†One of my earliest memories is of my own dad telling me stories like this and it’s nice to be able to carry on the tradition.
As I was reading to her the other night it struck me that authors are so desperate to come up with new riffs on traditional stories (the three bears for example) that it would be entirely possible for kids to miss out on ever hearing the original tales. The traditional fairy storybooks we have are all a little bit generic and dull to read; certainly the illustrations are a tad bland. Whereas all the “reimaginings†have lovely pictures and more witty texts. I do occasionally tell her a fairy story from my own memory, but these must be a little confusing for her as at some point I invariably say something like “oh wait, hang on, before that happened she sat on all the chairs and broke the littlest oneâ€. My version of the three bears has a plot structure similar to pulp fiction in its flashbacks.
Usbourne books rock.