





































































Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis


ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 40, ISSUE 2 (2020) 

  
 

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Book Review 

 

Philosophical Adventures with Fairy Tales: new ways to explore familiar 
tales with kids of all ages. 
 
Wendy. C. Turgeon 
Rowman & Littlefield 
168 pages 
2010 
Hardcover $75, Paper, $35, Kindle $33 (US dollars)  

 
 

Review by Richard Morehouse  
 
 

 
  
s I began reading Wendy Turgeon’s fascinating book, I found myself in the middle of a 
long-ago memory about a training course for teaching Junior Great Books. A group of 

teachers reads silently, Jack and the Beanstalk. We generated some questions within the rubric of the 
Great Book training approach, which is exploring possible meanings of the story, or what was the 
author’s intended meaning for this specific part of the story. The question that we chose to answer 
was: Why did Jack climb the beanstalk the third time? As the trainer indicated, the discussion will end 
when we have exhausted all of the possible supportable meaning of our question. In our case, this was 
about 1 hour. 
 

Going back to my opening remembrance, Wendy Turgeon’s book is not about Junior Great 
books, what the book is about is getting young people and adults doing philosophy and using Fairy 
Tales as one of the ways of accomplishing that goal. With that end in mind, she presents two sections 
in this readable and practical guide: Section 1, Philosophy, dialogue, and Fairy Tales, and Section 2, 
Fairy Tales.  
 
Section 1 – Philosophy, Dialogue, and Fairy Tales 

 

In her chapter One, “Philosophy is for kids!”, Wendy Turgeon provides an overview in support 
of the chapter tile by looking at prominent educators and philosophers who have advocated for 
children as philosophers: Gareth Matthews, Matthew Lipman, and Kieran Egan. Using the ideas and 
strategies of these philosophers and educators, Turgeon prepares the reader for helping young people 
explore open-ended and sometimes controversial issues. She provides a beginning answer to this issue 
here. 
 

A 



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Adults and teens worry that such open questions will confuse or upset children looking for 
answers in certainty. And true, there are some questions that really do seek confirmation 
and reassurance that adults are in control and that it's alright. But as we shall see some of 
these most fundamental and significant human questions in our search for meaning lack 
that clarity and recognizable pass to THE answer that is not automatically hopeless or a bad 
thing (6). 
 

Her answer to how to approach these questions is explored throughout the book. 
 

Chapter two, “Planning a Philosophical Conversation” provides an answer to the question 
“What does pre-college philosophy look like?” Guideline two is to invite “a child or a group of 
children to have fun with philosophy! Tell them philosophy is about asking questions, exploring 
different answers and looking for puzzles1” (12). I was struck by the value of finding a puzzle. Such 
prompts hint at ways of thinking with young people, especially with children between preschool and 
elementary school. It struck me that looking for puzzles, as well as solving them, is what many children 
do much of the time, with or without adult hints or supervision. To engage with a puzzle is to do 
adult work while still being playful.  
 

Within these guidelines, we get a sense of the poetry in Turgeon’s work when she writes that it is 
not always important to stick fastidiously to the topic and advocates for following the discussion where 
children lead it.  “Ideas can be like beautiful birds that start off in a bush but fly up in the sky and we 
follow them, forgetting about the bush. Don't worry about staying with the storyline”, Turgeon tells 
us. She goes on to say, “This willingness to follow ideas outside the story differentiates philosophical 
discussions from other reading lessons” (12). These lines are among the ways that Turgeon’s own 
adventure with fairy tales differs from discussion guides in the philosophy for children's corpus as well 
as Junior Great Book Discussion Guides. 

 
Middle school and high school guidelines begin with a statement of purpose that differs only in 

detail from ways of leading discussion in childhood and elementary school. What I saw as the most 
helpful bit of advice was that the students own the discussion, that it is their choice of questions and 
their pursuit of understanding that is most valuable. The facilitator should not be too concerned 
about how long the discussion should last or when it should end (14). 

 
Some things that may help make for a richer discussion includes asking for examples and 

definitions, distinguishing between descriptions and prescriptions. As students learn to use deductive 
and inductive logic any disputed outcome may be resolved or set aside for later discussion.  “What ifs” 
and counterarguments may also open new avenues for fruitful discussion. As facilitators, we must be 
open to all responses. We simultaneously should be aware that all assertions are not equally acceptable 
or well supported.  Evidence and reasons matter (15). 

 
Turgeon includes in this chapter questions for debriefing. These questions are (1) what did we 

discover? (2) what questions remain for us to continue to ponder? (3) did we listen to one another 

                                                 
1 My emphasis 



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with respect? (4) did we offer reasons for what we said? (5) did we explore facts and values? (6) did 
everyone get a chance to offer his or her view? Taken together they provide both a summary of 
progress and a potential sense of confidence for the work completed. 

 
Chapter three provides a breezy but informative overview of the history and uses of fairy tales. An 
informative and insightful bit of new information for me was that “Mother Goose” was a way that 
some German families referred to their children’s Nany. Turgeon provides a helpful overview of the 
history of fairy tales with “getting into the weeds” of academic disputes. This chapter sets the table for 
the delicious meal of using fairy tales as discussion starters, the main course meal as well as dessert.  
 
Section 2 – Fairy Tales 

 
Twelve fairy tales are presented in separate chapters (6 -17). This is the largest part of the book 

and makes up 127 pages of a 169 paged book, that is, 75 % of the book is the how-to guide. Wendy 
Turgeon’s choice to allot such a large portion of the book to examples that can be implemented in the 
classroom seems appropriate especially for readers who are actively involved in Philosophy for 
Children (P4C). 

 
All of these chapters are organized in the same format. They begin with Plot and move forward 

with Targeting Age Level2, Reading Plan, and Themes. Under each theme, there are a different set of 
Discussion Questions, and Activities or Projects. The number of themes varies between as few as three 
to as many as seven. My original thought was to choose several stories and present the readers with an 
overview of those chapters. As I began writing about the first fairy tales lesson plan, I realized that the 
best I could accomplish was a poorly done re-doing in a shorter version of what Turgeon had already 
done well in a somewhat longer lesson plan. This approach would have also deprived the reader of the 
joy of discovering for her or himself the rich experience of a first encounter with Turgeon’s insightful 
approach to fairy tales. 

 
Readers who are not familiar with the P4C literature might benefit from looking at Appendix A 

provided by Turgeon, ‘More information about Philosophy and Children’. Some things the reader 
might overlook but are important include the second page of the introduction where Turgeon invites 
the reader to look at the Appendixes. Each appendix provides helpful material for using the lesson 
plans or enriching our understanding of methods and content. Perhaps most valuable is the list of 
books she cites regarding the philosophical underpinning that Turgeon draws on explicitly and 
implicitly as she constructed the lessons for this work. Unfortunately, in this reviewer’s opinion, she 
neglects to include one of the works of Kieran Egan. While there are many of Egan’s works that could 
enhance understanding for conducting a philosophically oriented approach to fairy tales, I would 
recommend his An imaginative approach to teaching (2005). The reader should not overlook the 
illustration which begins chapters in Section 2. The illustrations are by Alice Gerhardstein and might 
provide a unique opportunity for discussion.  

 

                                                 
2 Sometimes Targeting and Reading Level is integrated into Reading Plan and sometimes each heading has its own 
paragraph. 



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The reader will be much aided by looking at “Some notes on Sources.” These last pages (167-
168) of the book were of great value to this reviewer as they provide a place to find the original stories. 
While many of us grew up reading the Brothers Grim and Hans Christian Andersen, we may not have 
read Maria Ratar’s version of Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella and are even less likely to have read her 
versions of Maria Tatar's Fisher’s Bird, White snake or the Seven Ravens. 

 
Turgeon’s Philosophical Adventures is an exciting invitation and a practical tool for discovering 

and re-discovering twelve fairy tales and provides a roadmap for teachers and parents in ways to engage 
students. Wendy Turgeon’s book is readable and comprehensive yet not overwhelming. It is a 
welcome addition to the literature on teaching kids as they engage ideas in a new and deeper way. I 
found myself occasionally wishing that she would go deeper or provide more specific connections to 
philosophy, but on contemplation, I realized that Turgeon was not writing for me, but for the many 
teachers and parents who could enrich themselves and the children who will be exposed to fairy tales 
and philosophy in new ways. I am glad she wrote Philosophical Adventures for them. 
  
 

Address Correspondences to:  
Richard Morehouse   
Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Viterbo University  
Email: remorehouse@viterbo.edu 
 

mailto:remorehouse@viterbo.edu

