What age for Hans Christian Andersen? The Little Match Girl?

[ExcitedMama]

DS just turned 5 and loves fairy tales. He enjoyed the Blue Fairy Book and was never bothered by it, even though I was shocked in places as I'd never read the original stories before. I was looking at what to get next and thought this book looked beautiful:

 

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1782501185/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I though it would be a fun introduction to Andersen but now I'm worried after I started looking through it when it arrived. I've never read his stories in the original before or heard anything about the Little Match Girl, I do vaguely remember my dad listening to it as a song when I was a kid, and it just seems so sad. Especially with the full color pictures. Is it too sad for this age? Lang was more far off places and fictional Giants whereas a dead little girl just seems too real on a street. Am I being too sensitive? Read now or wait for what age?

 

Thank you so much!

[Jackie]

DD is 4 now and we've started in on Hans Christian Anderson and Brothers Grimm. Some of the tales are rather dark, much darker than the sanitized versions I remember from my own childhood, but she loves them. There are a few I've held back on, but I do intend to read them over the next year when she is 5. She is typically unfazed by the violence, but gets upset at some of the intentional emotional vindictiveness exhibited by characters. For example, she was much more upset by the witch casting Rapunzel out than she was by the witch blinding Rapunzel's husband. I've given up predicting what is going to cause a reaction from her and just discuss as we go along.

[Kiara.I]

*Some* of Andersen's stories would be fine.  Little Ida's Flowers would probably be okay.

I read "The Little Mermaid" to myself at 5 and was traumatized.  I wouldn't read it again for another 5 years.  So yes.  Be a little cautious with Andersen.  For what it's worth, the Little Match Girl didn't bother me nearly as much.

[alisoncooks]

We listened to The Little Match Girl last year, some time. My youngest daughter was around 5-6. It took my girls a little discussion and a few minutes to grasp that the little girl died...then they were...not angry, not terribly upset....but a bit put out that I'd had them listen to such a "horrible story". :p

[Tanaqui]

H. C. Andersen's idea of a happy ending was "everybody dies, so they get to go to heaven". If that's not your idea of a happy ending, you might find it a bit hard to stomach. He also was concerned with moralizing in a way that folktales and later children's literature often isn't, which if you ask me is even a harder pill to swallow.

 

[SageRebel]

I would say 4-5, maybe 6. It depends on how comfortable you are and your family situation. I bought the complete tales of H.C. Anderson and we are reading through them. I think they are a bit much, but if you are trying to process death, it helps them open up conversations, and dare I say sometimes even in the darkest we can find a way to laugh. I got Grimm complete tales and read through some but others I let behind. The boys at Butcher was a real shocker for me when I was laying in bed reading it one night alone. I read a poem to them about Little Boy Blue, and at the end I was bawling my eyes out because the little boy didn't wake up. I sing the original Ring around the Rosy. Most Mother Goose have censored it. In the older days death happened a lot more, and there was little censoring. I think these things were important in their processing and understanding the hard parts of life.

[IsabelC]

I don't think we should necessarily be avoiding things purely because they might upset the child. I remember feeling absolutely devastated about the little match girl and horrified by the little mermaid as a kid, but I don't wish I had been protected from that. I believe that trying to shield kids from anything that doesn't have a happy ending does them a disservice. I don't mean the children should be subjected to every horrible thing that we adults know about! But I do think that kids need the opportunity to explore some less happy storylines as a gentle and safe way to start learning how to process those feelings. But obviously ymmv and you should let your knowledge of your own child guide you.

[Tanaqui]

I sing the original Ring around the Rosy. Most Mother Goose have censored it. In the older days death happened a lot more, and there was little censoring.

 

There is no one "original" Ring Around the Rosy. This song seems to have existed in oral tradition since at least the late 1800s, at which point there were already several forms in existence. There is no evidence whatsoever that it's connected to the Plague.

 

http://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/07/ring-around-the-rosie-metafolklore-rhyme-and-reason/

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_'_Roses (note they give a somewhat earlier citation, but that citation is in the form of "back in the day, they sang it this way". Note also that if that citation is accurate, that version was very different from any version that might conceivably be linked to death).

 

It's worth noting, also, that up until relatively recently, nursery rhymes were purely an oral tradition. Heck, even today, new "nursery rhymes" (if we consider this an open, rather than a closed canon) make the rounds and accrue variations long before they're written in books. Often, if you see a book with a version of a rhyme that is not like the one you grew up with, it's not because of "censorship" but simply because the person compiling the rhymes was familiar with a different version.

 

People can be very adamant about The Correct version of the songs and rhymes and stories and games they learned in childhood, but the beauty of it all is that there is so much diversity in these things, not that we're all learning the exact same songs and rhymes and stories and games in lockstep.