[dynamic_sausage]

Some of the tales from my childhood that I hold very dear to this day looked at really tough topics: death, solitude, betrayal. "Ronia, the Robber's Daughter", "Timm Thaler, or the Traded Laughter", "The Adventures of Sajo and her Beaver People" by Lindgren, Krüss, and Grey Owl are some that come to mind. Their authors were interesting, complicated people who had something to say about the world they lived in. Proponents of the coddling style of child rearing would probably declare them "traumatizing" and "inappropriate" for the 7- or 8-year old kid that I was when I read them. What turned out to be really traumatizing though was the real world, not these fairy tales — which ended up teaching me some pretty helpful lessons after all.