[jonahx]

You're technically correct, ofc, but I feel this is a red herring.

Sure, all fairy tales have oral origins, and with Grimm you even various translations over the years.

Nevertheless, me, my parents, and their parents were all reading basically the same thing, and often the exact same book. That is, the books have been around over 150 years and have become canon in their own right. It is the sanitization of those books that people are objecting to.

So you can't just say "hey these things come from an ever-evolving oral tradition and this is just one more evolution". That doesn't accurately describe what is happening.

[pyrale]

> So you can't just say "hey these things come from an ever-evolving oral tradition and this is just one more evolution". That doesn't accurately describe what is happening.

On the other hand, why should people stop doing what they've done for cenuries because some guy wrote something down at some point? Part of what keeps stories relevant is that parents adapt them to the current context. Stopping their evolution is the best way to kill their transmission. Whether the transmission is oral or written is kind of irrelevant.

[schneems]

I think in an ideal world they come with some kind of a diff. Maybe an activity guide with prompts for parents.

I picked up “Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves” from naeyc and that’s more or less what they propose. They suggested that when you see a problematic representation in your kids media not to hide it, but note it “That doesn’t seem very fair to be judged only by <blank>” and if there’s time engage the kid “what do you think?”

It gives a natural way to talk about the problems while also showing good examples of how they might come up in the kids life.

You can also do the inverse. Remove the gnarly reference and then introduce a surrogate conversation with possibly easier to understand plots or themes. Later when they are older you can, and should, talk to them about how the differences and ask what they think. Ask them to come up with a different change and think how that might influence the reader.

Now not only did they get the changed and original they get a healthy dose of media literacy to understand how changing narratives can change how we view the world.

There are challenges and difficulties of course, but it’s certainly possible to do well in my opinion.

[onlypassingthru]

>I think in an ideal world they come with some kind of a diff.

I've got a couple annotated editions of famous books that do just that by way of marginalia and extended footnotes. It's a great way to learn about a story's evolution or context.

[magicalist]

Saying "my book is the canon because I've had it a long time" is a type of censorship itself. Having more than one version of a story is not the type of sanitization this article is talking about.

[relaxing]

I’m missing the point where that’s not happening. Is it that a book is not oral transmission?

[jonahx]

Correct it is a book. The analogy to what's going on now is not "oral evolution" but the OG bowdlerization of Shakespeare by Bowdler himself, and we (rightly) see that today as ridiculous.