Does telling children fairytales make them irrational?

I agree with you, rosesarered. The Water Babies is a proper book, as is Peter Pan - they're not fairy tales.

Kingsley called it a fairy tale. He wrote it, so he should know.

He didn't know how we'd view his works 200 years later.

Most children's books are fairy tales if you take that view!

So because you have decided, it's no longer a fairy tale, is that right?
What's your definition of a fairy tale?

The horrors of what was going on in the real world of Brothers Grimm could only be handled by using imagery & metaphor as carriers of an awful truth. Many of these stories are universal, found with different details in many parts of the world. They follow a similar pattern, even the modern ones like Star Wars, - main character (human, animal or object), a mission to be achieved, obstacles often involving evil to be overcome, finding people or things to help overcome the obstacles & the overcoming of the obstacles to achieve the mission. What else is real life about Mr Dawkins & told in a way that young & old, ignorant & clever can understand at many different levels. Who would or could listen to a purely factual account or have their imaginations stimulated in order to create their own solutions to life's problems?

Janthea Your second comment amused me!

My son's new wife will not come to pantomimes with us. Too close to home.

Had a look at The Water Babies again a little while ago: big mistake. But it is still more palatable than Charles's brother Henry's rabid anti-Roman-Catholicism in Ravenshoe (at least Charles put it in an understandable c16 setting in Westward Ho!). What is it about the Kingsleys and the sound ho? Or should Henry's novel be pronounced Raven-shoe?

Dawkins' rant against fairy tales is utter nonsense; he is a constant irritant to me, a laid-back non-militant atheist. More seriously, I think he is wrong to demand that young children be encouraged to be sceptical; they should be encouraged to have enquiring minds; scepticism comes later.

It is quite unbelievable that we were expected to read it, age six or seven grumppa. I know I had nightmares.

Here's a GN blog I wrote a while back. Dawkins no psychologist is he.
www.gransnet.com/blogs/magic-or-science

My daughter LOVED the princess and the pea! I got tired of reading it over and over I can remember as a child being terrified by the story of Hansel and Gretel.

In fairness to Dawkins, he has since said " it is in fact a “very interesting question” to ask what effect magical fairy tales might have on a child’s mind.

He said: “On the one hand, you might perhaps rather naively expect to give children supernatural fairy tales would inculcate into them the idea that supernaturalism is real. On the other hand - and this I didn’t say [at the Festival] but I now say because it’s a very good point - it could be that fairy tales have a beneficial effect because the child learns that there are stories that aren’t true. The child learns to discriminate between the stories that are fun and wonderful, but not true, from those stories that are true.”

The Water Babies was written partly as a "fairy tale" and partly as part of the campaign against sending "climbing boys" - (usually under ten, or small and malnourished) up chimneys.

The publication of 'The Water-Babies' did much to raise public awareness about the gross mistreatment of children in this kind of employment. Parliament responded the following year with a new Chimney Sweepers Regulation Act. ( www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/19thcentury/overview/childrenchimneys/ )

I have not read "The boy in the Striped Pyjamas". Is that a similar portrayal of a real-life siuation, written for children?

Our view of how robust children's minds are to things has changed in a century and a half. I have Sunday School prizes awarded to relatives in the early 1900s which tell of children mortally ill and dying, orphans shunted out to distant and unsympathetic relatives, and families reduced to the utmost poverty. All endured with admirably pious fortitude, of course.

Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes, still scares me.
Another was The Pied Piper of Hamelin, perhaps more folk tale than fairy tale though?

Elegran - I didn't know that about the Water Babies, that interesting. It's a book that will always remain one of my childhood favourites, I read it to my children and hope to read it my granddaughter when she's a bit older.

Should have said that's interesting not that

Elegran "The boy in the striped pyjamas" is worth a read. The actual story may be a little contrived, probably not fact, but it makes excellent points about friendship and bigotry.

Actually the Chimney Sweepers Regulation Act was ineffective, because it was not enforced. In 1875, the Chimney Sweepers' Act made more of a difference. It required sweeps to be licensed and made it the duty of the police to enforce all previous legislation.

Penguin There were morals to be learnt from both those books - "Be careful what you wish for. You may get it, and it may not be the blessing you expected" and "If you don't treat people fairly, you will regret it"

One of the biggest fairy tales, books of magic realizm, collections of science fantasy, .... of all, is the Bible - and like all such good reads is available in various forms.
The word bible has a Greek origin = the books.
Certain sources claim that Xtian Bibles range from the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon to the eighty-one books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church canon.
So influential are these stories that people go to war, massacre each other, perform FGM, and instigate pogroms, thanks to their influence. Some parents even send their children to state funded schools where only teachers of that particular sect are allowed to work so that they will be helped to trust these tales for the rest of their lives and not fall into revizionist ways such as accepting Darwinian theory, and other scientific flim flam.

Has anyone read any of the Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy books by Terry Jones and illustrated by Brian Froud? They are great fun with superb pictures. I have never outgrown my love of fairy tales

Ye indeed, but I felt really sorry for some of those pressed fairies - they looked so shocked! (and who could blame them...)

BeeWitch, very many thanks for your mention of Lady Chatterley's ''Pressed Fairy'' book, variously categorized as : Speculative fiction or Paranormal.
I live very close to the home of the Cottingley Fairies - the inspiration and guiding glimmer for this tome. The fairies' bower and sanctuary is a site much celebrated and venerated by the locals as befits such an asset in this area of derelict and fire-torn mills, but a cobble's throw from Bronte-Land.
Well sculptured and manicured paths, much frequented by residents and their defecating dogs, lead one to the various immaculately maintained and tended settings featured in the 1997 films FairyTale: A True Story and Photographing Fairies. Discrete, defaced placards tell the tale of how Conan Doyle's famous detective, Mr Cumberbund, reputedly discovered the flaws faulting the photographs, and how 'Magician' James Randi overthrew that cynical analysis as recently as 1978.
Replete with government grants, and generous donations from the public visiting Fairy-Holme, it is rumoured that the National Media Museum in the nearby City of Bradford [Woolopolis] is to build a new fairy-ring-wing dedicated to traditions verified by such manifestations as these. Joe Cooper(+), a much loved local banjo-playing sociologist and astrologer, has agreed to appear in ectoplazmic form to declare the wing open.
I too must fly, I have star-dust to sprinkle and broomsticks to fettle.

(+) = Cooper, Joe, 1982. “Cottingley: At Last the Truth.”
The Unexplained 117: 2238–2340.

And another view: theconversation.com/the-princess-and-the-priest-dawkinss-attack-on-fairytales-27661?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+9+June+2014+-+1707&utm_content=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+9+June+2014+-+1707+CID_29351ff4204b759ff39071545472c79e&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=The%20princess%20and%20the%20priest%20Dawkinss%20attack%20on%20fairytales