31 Days of Children’s Literature- Fairy Tales

I finished the children’s literature class on Friday 10-9! I learned so much about what makes these stories timeless. There are so many lessons that we can take out of them when we actually read between the lines.

In fairy tales I learned that there are usually three different themes. Courage, Love, and Restoration. In Beauty and the Beast you see all three of these. In the beginning, Beauty’s father is made into the Beast’s prisoner. He begs to be let go but the beast says that one of his daughter’s must take his place. Beauty shows her undying love for her father and takes his place. She also shows courage in this moment to go to a place where she doesn’t know what is going to happen or even where she is going.

Throughout the story we see Beauty adjust to her new surroundings. We see her stand up to the beast in some situations. We also see her start to realize how she feels about the beast. She starts to fall in love with him, but doesn’t realize it until it is almost too late when the beast is dying.

Beauty and the Beast is a story about restoration more than love and courage though. Beast has to restore himself back to human form. He must learn to love himself in order to do this though. As he is dying, he realizes that Beauty has helped him learn to love himself. She realizes that she loves him as well and her tears shed while he dies breaks the spell. He is restored back into a human.

As adults we tend to think that oh this is just a story for kids. We don’t think that we need to hear the lessons that are scattered in children’s literature. Adults can learn something from fairy tales just as much as kids can learn from them. Adults don’t think about how a simple lesson of loving yourself and helping others to learn to love themselves can make on impact on them.

These types of lessons are learned throughout all children’s literature.

Tomorrow, I am starting the Shakespeare lessons. I will have more posts about what I learn from that course I’m sure! Haha! =)

Check out what else I learned about imagination vs. moral imagination here.