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CONTENTS 

From the Editor ...................................................................... 2 

1993 Conference Papers 

Child as Story-Maker 
 Kay Stone .......................................................................... 3 

"Postmodern Fairy Tales" in Contemporary Children's 
Literature 
 Cynthia Anne Cox ........................................................... 13 

CFS: 1993 Annual Meeting ....................................... 20 

Notes and Announcements………………………….24 

Contributors…………………………………………..24 

Cover: Photograph of W.W. Newell courtesy of Harvard 
 University Archives. 



 

FROM THE EDITOR. . . 
It has been a long and busy winter. For various reasons (some of 
them even good ones and not mere procrastination), the printing 
and mailing of CFR 16.1 dragged on into the new year. I was 
delighted to receive a progress letter from Jan Brunvand and 
discover that others are even later than I getting their encyclope-
dia articles done. 

Speaking of letters, Herb Halpert wrote to suggest that the 
four articles in the last issue were somewhat vague about the 
location of the research and that it was "a weakness in the 
papers that the authors did not give the geographical settings for 
their observations" and that CFR should also provide the names, 
addresses, and academic affiliations of its contributors. I must 
say that I have been thinking the latter myself and have done 
nothing about it. Henceforth, however, CFR will provide brief 
notes about the contributors. 

This issue of CFR continues two themes discussed at 
previous children's folklore section panels at AFS and also 
reported in previous issues of this review. The fall 1992 issue 
(15.1) of CFR carried the complete panel on children and 
narrative from the 1991 AFS meeting. Kay Stone's "Child as 
Story-Maker" was originally presented as a paper at the 1993 
American Folklore Society Meeting in Eugene, Oregon, and 
carries on the concern with how children learn and use narrative. 
In addition, Stone also examines her dual role as mother/folklor-
ist and Rachel's dual role as daughter/informant. Cynthia Anne 
Cox's "'Postmodern Fairy Tales' in Contemporary Children's 
Literature" follows lines established by Pack Carnes in "Arnold 
Lobel's Fables and Traditional Fable Features" (CFR 15.2) and 
examines the way in which contemporary writers for children 
are "reinventing" well known works of fairy tale literature. 

This volume concludes, as all spring issues do, with the 
Minutes from the October meeting and various announcements. 
For those of you following the fortunes of Associate CFR 
Editor Laurie Evans, I can tell you that she has decided not to 
return to East Carolina University as my secretary, but will stay 
home with her new son; however, she is establishing an home-
based editing and desktop publishing venture and will continue 
as Associate Editor of CFR –for a while at least. 

I look forward to seeing you all in Milwaukee. 

C.W. Sullivan III 

2 



 Child as Story-Makerl 

Kay Stone 

When I was five, my parents tell me, I regaled them with rambling, 
disjointed stories of my adventures with Snaky the Rattlesnake, my 
"invisible" friend. My mother described how amazed she was that a 
small child could spin out such involved narratives. I assumed that 
my older brother had found other ways to express his creativity—but 
now I wonder. 

Shortly after my first child began spontaneously creating his 
own original stories at roughly the same age—five—I heard a 
presentation on children's stories by Brian Sutton-Smith.2 I began to 
understand that I was not, after all, a child prodigy, but merely 
passing through an exciting developmental stage of childhood that 
we all experience, in one way or another. I suppose my brother must 
have kept his stories to himself. 

In the early 1980s two particular storytelling incidents with my 
second child, Rachel, excited my curiosity as a folklorist with a 
primary interest in adults as story-makers. In order to document 
Rachel's stories, I had to shift roles from mother to scholar: while 
listening to and recording the stories and later preparing academic 
papers on them, I was aware that ethical concerns entered the 
situation. The delicate balance between my position as subjective 
parent and objective scholar colors the background of this writing. 

There are already studies of children at various ages telling 
stories: these present a broad spectrum of ages and genres, the 
emphasis being on the development of verbal skills (See Sutton-
Smith; Pitcher and Prelinger; Chukovsky). Each of these studies has 
been carefully conceived and carried out, and each includes abun-
dant examples gathered from dozens of children over a stretch of 
time. Sutton-Smith examines the developmental stages of children as 
verbal artists, while Pitcher/Prelinger and Chukovsky emphasize 
psychological interpretations. Chukovsky in particular insists that 
children have a deep need for fantasy and create their own even in 
the absence of external literary models. He also notes what he calls 
"the linguistic genius" of the child, who does not merely copy any 
adult models that are available but instead "introduces critical 
evaluation, analysis, and control," even as early as two years of age 
(Chukovsky 9). 

Obviously such conscientious approaches are needed for any 
meaningful generalizations to be made on children as storytellers. 
The stories I offer here, in contrast, were told by one child over a 
very limited time period in an uncontrolled environment. This 
serendipi- 

3 



 

Stone 

tous collecting was not part of a planned study, nor central to my overall 
work on folk narratives. My modest intent was to describe how one young 
teller composed two narratives using diverse elements and how she herself re-
sponded to these events. However, the question of ethics, as relevant to 
incidental collecting as it is to other contexts, sheds new light on this topic. 

I have been acutely aware of my accountability as a folklorist, as well as 
a parent, in using stories that are by right the property of the teller. When I 
was asked to contribute a paper to a recent folklore panel on ethics, "The 
Folklorist's Responsibility to the Child," I thought immediately of my earlier 
descriptions of Rachel's storytelling. The result is a re-view of the context and 
process of a child's story-making and the complexities of interaction between 
folklorist and informant. In working with children we need to be respectfully 
aware of ethical concerns that arise from our "objective" scholarship. What is 
this folklorist's responsibility to this child, and how was it negotiated in the 
two-year period covered by Rachel's storytelling activities? 

From the beginning I asked her permission to record the stories and to 
use them as part of my research. I cannot take full credit for this, since Rachel 
herself was acutely aware that these stories "belonged" to her and reminded 
me of this fact every time the matter arose. But at age five she had only the 
vaguest notion of what it meant to use her material for academic research. I 
was surprised-and encouraged-by Rachel's closing comment on the taped 
variant of her first story. She concludes with "That's the end," and then adds 
cheerily, "And hello to all your students." She understood even before I did 
that I was not merely recording her story as a proud parent; I had no plans to 
examine her story at that time, but I did indeed use it as an example for 
students in my folklore classes. 

The two stories I introduce here, the legend of "Loon Man and Bone 
Woman" (told at age five) and the anecdote of "The Men With Hats" (age 
seven) struck me as unusual. (The titles were chosen by Rachel.) I had just 
begun examining contemporary storytelling by adults and was sensitive to the 
dynamics of verbal creativity. I had also told folktales in a number of 
Winnipeg schools and was intrigued by occasional children willing to 
respond with stories of their own-but children did not become the focus of my 
narrative studies. Thus my initial interest in Rachel's storytelling was a 
general curiosity with no serious intent to transform her into an informant. 

I had heard many of her spontaneous creations over the years, but these 
two had qualities that awakened the folklorist in me. They were fuller in their 
development and told with greater assurance, perhaps because they were each 
based on stories that Rachel had experienced orally. Because I had also heard 
them I could see more clearly how Rachel functioned as an expressive artist, 
using or discarding elements of the originals to produce her own narratives. 

4 



 

Child as Story-Maker 

She firmly claimed them as her own creations, establishing self-conscious-
ness as an artist and also recognition of her responsibility as an entertainer. 
She was aware that she was not merely discoursing for a sympathetic ear, but 
consciously seeking to create coherent stories for which I happened to be a 
listener. This is much clearer in her second story, "The Men With Hats," told 
in the presence of an older brother and later to an adult friend. 

Let us look at each story within the context of its telling and then 
consider the ethical questions raised by publishing this article. Rachel, now 
seventeen and quite fiercely aware of her rights, has again given her full 
permission to use her material, though she asked why I was still working on 
"those old stories." 

"Loon Man and Bone Woman"3 

In 1981, I was making lunch for the two of us when Rachel began a story 
about a man who became a loon. At this age she was in the plot stage of 
storytelling discussed at length by Brian Sutton-Smith (1981). At first "Loon 
Man" seemed to resemble her other rambling tales with no fixed characters 
and a loosely connected series of events, but I soon caught the thread of a 
coherent narrative that took shape as I listened: Loon Man became a well-
defined protagonist who set off in search of his missing bird wife and 
children, stolen by Bone Woman. Aided by four intimidating giants and a 
leviathan pike, he arrived at Bone Woman's "eggloo" just in time to rescue 
his family from being cooked for supper. 

Her spontaneous narrative seemed to resemble what Sutton-Smith calls 
"folkstories," original narratives that "are not the same as folktales, but share 
common elements with them" (Sutton-Smith 1). I was intrigued by the 
literary sophistication of her story (which she very firmly claimed as her 
own) and asked if she could tell it again, not expecting her to be able to 
repeat it fully since all previous stories had been once-only events; she not 
only agreed, but permitted me to tape the retelling. I was surprised that she 
was able reproduce it accurately, and even improved on it as she went along. 
The story had a stronger beginning, a better motivated middle, and a more 
fully resolved conclusion; the characters and action remained stable, not 
shifting as I had expected. It had all the features of a completed narrative that 
had been consciously thought out, prepared, and rehearsed. 

Given the finished nature of the story and her ability to reproduce it, I 
thought she might have heard it in her kindergarten class, but when I asked 
where she had learned it, she answered with a slightly indignant tone, "I 
made it up." Her unambivalent claim to original ownership intrigued me so I 
asked how she got the ideas for the story. Without speaking she pointed to the 
wall 

5 



 

Stone 

behind me, where I found a colored print by Canadian Native artist Jackson 
Beardy. There, sure enough, was Loon Man—or more accurately, a loon who 
seemed to be battling a large fish; four domed shapes sat above them on the 
top left of the print, but there was no sign of giants or of Bone Woman and 
her "eggloo." She explained that the four domes were where the giants lived 
(in fact they are symbolic thunder-clouds in Beardy's print) and that Bone 
Woman and her house had been destroyed by Loon Man, so they were not in 
the picture. 

But if the giants and Bone Woman were absent from the print, did they 
spring from her imagination or from an outside source? When I asked, she 
reminded me that we had seen a puppet play based on the Inuit legend of 
"Kivioq" in which a hunter marries a bird woman who flies away one day. 
He follows after her and meets a threatening giant, a huge pike, and a 
cannibalistic Bee Woman, whom he defeats.4 Rachel told me that she had not 
enjoyed the play because it was "too scary" and added, "my story was better." 
Why? Because it had no puppets, and "it had a better ending." Rachel 
reunites Loon Man and his family, while in the puppet play Kivioq's Goose 
Wife and children refuse to return with him. Rachel's variant was also less 
violent and threatening without losing dramatic impact. 

In sorting out how she composed and repeated her story on the spot by 
imaginatively bringing together an Inuit legend, a Cree print, and her own 
reworking of plot, character, and motivation, I was able to see in miniature 
the interaction of text, texture, and context. With her permission I presented a 
paper at the 1984 American Folklore Society meeting ("At Home in the 
Field"), came home, and filed it away. 

"The Men With Hats" 

Two years later I again happened to be present when Rachel tried a very 
different kind of story, a narrative joke. A joke is a very challenging genre, as 
its success depends on the precision of the wording and the successful 
delivery of the punch line. Up to this time Rachel had only told simple one-
line jokes with no plot line to remember. 

In the spring of 1984 a few adult friends gathered at our home for an 
informal afternoon of conversation and joke-telling. Rachel, age seven, 
moved in and out of the room as she went about her own affairs. I was not 
aware that she was even present when the following joke was told by a 
woman already known in our circle as an irreverent jokester:5 

Two Sikhs wearing turbans are challenged at Heaven's gates 
by St. Peter, who asks each, separately, a question. The first is 
asked what would happen if he lost one eye and then the other, 

6 



 

Child as Story-Maker 

to which he responds that he would be half blind and then totally 
blind. St. Peter allows him to enter Heaven, then questions the 
second man about what would happen if he lost one ear and then 
the other. He responds (having heard the first answers but not the 
questions) that he would be half blind and then totally blind—
because his turban would slip down over one eye and then the 
other. St Peter, impressed, lets him in as well. 

I was putting Rachel to bed that night, a time when we often shared 
casual stories, when she offered to tell the joke "about the men with hats." 
She surprised me by repeating the joke with absolute accuracy, making only 
one change from exotic turbans to prosaic hats. I complimented her on her 
good memory and said good night. 

The next morning she offered to tell "that joke" again before going off to 
school, this time in the presence of her older brother who was not normally 
appreciative of her attempts at joke-telling. As I prepared breakfast, she 
introduced an entirely original joke based on the pattern of the one she heard 
the previous day:6 

There were two kids getting ready for school and their 
mother said, "I want to ask you two questions first. You first"  
So the first boy went in [to the kitchen] and the mother said, 
"What would happen if I gave you only half your breakfast?" "I'd 
be half hungry." "So, what if I didn't give you any breakfast?" "I'd 
be totally hungry." "O.K., you can go." "Just a minute. I want to 
say bye to my brother." "So she let him." So he went in and he 
whispered, "The first answer is half hungry and the second one is 
totally hungry. Bye!" So then the mother asked the second one, 
"What would happen if I turned the radio down?" "I'd be half 
hungry." "Well what would happen if I turned it all the way off?" 
"I'd be totally hungry." "Are you crazy? Why would you be 
hungry?" "Well, if you were so busy turning the radio on and off 
you wouldn't have time to make me breakfast" So she let him go 
too. 

My son and I both laughed, and Rachel seemed embarrassed by the total 
success of her performance, responding by saying, "that was just a silly 
joke." 

When they left for school, I sat down and wrote out her text, and thought 
again of "Loon Man and Bone Woman," also told while I was preparing a 
meal-that is, a casual rather than a formal setting, with my attention directed 
elsewhere rather than focused on her. As folklorist rather than mother, I 
noted that she was able to change the text without losing the original joke 
pattern, but at this point I had nothing more to say about the process. 

7 



 

Stone 

It took a third and unsuccessful retelling of this joke to fully reveal her 
understanding of her own creativity and to bring my folkloric curiosity to full 
life. Some weeks after the breakfast performance she was sitting with me and 
another friend, a man whom she felt entirely comfortable with and whom she 
knew to be a joke teller himself. He had just told a joke, and she uncharac-
teristically offered another; "Here's one I made up," she said proudly, 
apparently buoyed up by her previous successes. She used the kitchen setting 
again and remembered that the success of the joke depended on the questions 
and answers: 

This mother is making breakfast for her two kids, I think, and she 
had to ask them some questions before they went to school. So 
she said to one, "What would you do if I made you stay home 
from school today?" "I'd be dumb." "Well what if I made you stay 
home for a whole week?" "I'd be dumber." [The teller realizes 
that she will have difficulty developing this question and reveals 
her discomfort nonverbally by pausing, grimacing, shifting her 
weight, as she tries to figure out what to say next.] 

Well, so she says, "You can go to school now." "I have to 
tell my brother something first," and he runs into the living room 
and says "The answers are dumb and dumber." And he goes 
away. So then she asks the other kid, "What would happen if I 
took away your books?" "I'd be dumb." "What would happen if I 
took away your pen and paper?" "I'd be dumber." 

She does not bother to end the joke with the "You can go now" closing, but 
simply stops, pauses, and comments, "Well, that wasn't very good, was it!" 
This was a rhetorical rather than an actual question, and we ALL laughed—-
not at the joke but at her acknowledgment of its failure. 

I realized that her failure—and her recognition of it—was a clearer 
demonstration of creativity than her successes had been. I could see how she 
was using structure to build her new narrative, and I also understood how she 
had matured as a performer by accepting her responsibility to complete the 
story even when she understood that it was not going to work-and by 
gracefully acknowledging her failure. 

Later that year I asked her permission to use these three storytelling 
events for a paper to be given at the Canadian folklore meeting, and she 
agreed-after asking me who would be there and ascertaining that no one she 
knew would hear her joke.7 

My initial interest was in Rachel's gradual recognition of herself as a 
conscious performer with a responsibility to herself as artist and to her 
listeners as entertainer. Now, several years later, I have tried to reframe these 
experiences with the idea of addressing the ethical problems raised in this 

8 



 

Child as Story-Maker 

Panel—MY responsibility to HER. I began by showing Rachel, now 17, the 
abstract for the 1993 AFS panel and asking her to read what I'd written up to 
that point, explaining that she had complete control over what was to be 
included (I had already received permission to reuse the stories). I also asked 
her to add her own responses. It was my intention to encourage her to be an 
active collaborator rather than a passive informant. She promised to read what 
I had written, but never went beyond the abstract. "That's old stuff," she said 
when I urged her to give me a response. 

It has been helpful for me to reframe my work with Rachel in this altered 
perspective: if I had not been aware of the significance of our subtle role 
shifts from child and mother to informant and folklorist, it would have been 
impossible to reframe the present article. 

It has also been a challenge to maintain perspective because of the split 
focus of this article. On one hand it is an example of oral creativity, and on 
the other it is a commentary on ethical relations between researcher and child. 
There is obviously an advantage to being parent, teacher, or anyone else who 
is in steady contact with children on a long term basis. The child is familiar as 
both a human being and a creative, expressive individual. This is a subjective 
position given the privileged connections between the adult and the child. On 
the other hand, an academic researcher who may see a child only a few times 
has the advantage of objectivity, since personal connections are secondary to 
research interests. Scholarly training prepares the viewer to examine the 
young artists and what they create without the potential drawbacks of 
subjective personal relationships. 

I have enjoyed the challenge of attempting to be both parent and 
researcher, trying to find a balance between subjectivity and objectivity. What 
has guided me is the central issue of ethics, which can be even more critical 
when one is dealing with children who are close and familiar. It is hardly a 
unique situation, given the ground-breaking work of father/scholar Piaget, but 
the central issue remains the same: the child and the creations of the child 
must be as fully respected and protected from exploitation as those of any 
adult. As I noted earlier, I cannot take full credit for treating Rachel and her 
stories with consistent respect; she seemed to understand from the very 
beginning that her voice was her own possession and managed to let me 
know that she was aware of her rights. If she had at any point withdrawn her 
permission, there would be no article. 

I leave Rachel's stories with a sense of incompletion similar to that 
expressed by Pitcher and Prelinger, who conclude: 

We feel vividly how our analyses and interpretations have fallen 
short of doing justice to or even comprehending the complexity, 

9 



 

Stone 

the richness, and the literary quality, poetry, and beauty which 
many of the stories contain (240). 

*** 

As I wrote these final words and asked again if Rachel would read this 
paper and comment, she said, with more than a touch of 17-year-old sarcasm, 
"I don't need to read this again—I made the stories." She added that she 
expected a percentage of any royalties I received. While in this case it was a 
deliberately ironic request (she has learned that academic royalties are not 
impressive), it might have been less ironic if I were indeed earning money 
from a book of children's folklore. 

"And," Rachel might add, "hello to all your students." 

University of Winnipeg 
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada 

Notes 

1. This is a slightly revised version of the paper I presented at the 1993 AFS 
meeting in Eugene, Oregon. I am indebted to C.W. Sullivan III for requesting it; and 
also to Mary Louise Chown, Nathaniel Stone, and Carol McGirr for their responsive 
readings. 

2. By coincidence Sutton-Smith's presentation was at the 1976 AFS meeting in 
Philadelphia, which I attended with three-month-old Rachel, the subject of the present 
article. Sutton-Smith's paper, "Structural Parallels Between Children's Creative 
Activity and Children's Folklore," seems to be a bridge between his initial work on 
children's games and play and his later work on storytelling by children. 

3. The title was suggested by Rachel after the fact, in recognition that the taped 
telling had become a formal rather than a casual storytelling event and seemed, to her, 
to require a proper title. 

4. "Kivioq" was performed by the Manitoba Puppet Theatre in 1981, with 
realistic and accurately costumed puppets. It was not in any way a "precious" or 
diminished telling of a complex and challenging Inuit legend. Rachel was not the only 
young child in the audience who found it disturbing. 

5. Since this was an informal storytelling event the joke was not recorded. It is 
summarized from memory and checked with the original teller, who also gave her 
permission to include it here. 
 6. I wrote it down immediately after she left for school, trying to recreate her 
exact wording as well as I could and checking it with her on her return. 
 7. "The End of the Story" was presented at the annual meeting of the Folklore 
Studies Association of Canada in Winnipeg in 1984. 

10 



 

Child as Story-Maker 

Works Cited 

Chukovsky, Kornei. From Two to Five. Translated from the 1925 Russian edition, 
Malen’kie deti (Little Children), by Miriam Norton. Berkeley and Los Angeles: 
U of California P, 1965. 

Pitcher, Evelyn Goodenough, and Ernst Prelinger. Children Tell Stories. New York: 
 International UP, Inc., 1963. 
Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Folkstories of Children. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania 
 P. 1981. 

11 



 "Post modern Fairy Tales" in Contemporary 
Children's Literaturel 
Cynthia Anne Cox 

Publishers of children's literature have shown a renewed interest in 
fairy tales over the past several years, and especially noteworthy are 
recent releases which wreak conspicuous—and comic—variations 
on familiar characters and themes. In their playful experiments with 
the traditional form and content of Märchen, the authors of these 
highly artistic books reference and re-envision well-known folk 
narratives as their titles should indicate: The Frog Prince Continued, 
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Cinderella: The Untold 
Story, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales. 

Unlike the beloved fictions upon which they draw, these 
reworkings of folk stories deny order. They feature antiheroes and 
anti-heroines. They relinquish the notion that it is possible to exert 
any sort of control over the fragmented universe of human experi-
ence. They acknowledge that every situation is fraught with endless 
possibilities and that all we can ever hope to pursue is individual 
perception in its purely subjective form. In short, postmodernism has 
reached the fairy tale. 

On its way toward "reinventing" a work of fairy-tale literature, 
each of these picture books directs our attention to the printed 
documents that contain the stories we read and the images we see as 
do so many "postmodern" works for grown-up readers. For instance: 
facing each "ordinary" page of The Jolly Postman or Other People's 
Letters is an envelope, and each of the epistles enclosed in these 
envelopes is addressed to a fairy-tale character. In the manner of a 
conventional fairy tale, the book follows the course of a journey, 
tracing the route of a mail carrier as he makes his appointed rounds. 
In effect, then, The Jolly Postman is a story about stories. 

As we watch, Mr. and Mrs. Bear—of Three Bears Cottage, The 
Woods—receive a note of apology from Goldilocks; Hobgoblin 
Supplies Ltd. offers the OCCUPANT of Gingerbread Bungalow a 
catalog of products "for the modern witch"; B.B. (as in "Big Bad") 
Wolf is contacted by Attorney Harold Meeny and ordered to cease 
his harassment of Meeny's client, Miss Riding-Hood; Mr. V. (as in 
"Very") Bigg, resident of Beanstalk Gardens, receives a postcard 
from the vacationing Jack. And the correspondence of Cinderella 
constitutes a story about a story about a story: from the managing 
editor of the Peter Piper Press comes a letter asking Her Royal 
Highness to examine a book he hopes to publish for young readers 

13 



 

Cox 

in celebration of her marriage; enclosed with the letter is a tiny book which 
tells Cinderella's "rags to riches" story in "ordinary" fashion. 

Equally aware of itself as a text is The Stinky Cheese Man and Other 
Fairly Stupid Tales. This book is an anthology containing fairy-tale parodies-
among them "The Tortoise and the Hair," "The Really Ugly Duckling," and 
"The Princess and the Bowling Ball" (rather than "the pea"). "The Stinky 
Cheese Man" spoofs the tale of "The Gingerbread Man," replacing the cute 
with the disgusting: the title figure is no longer a sweet cookie with raisins 
for facial features; now, his head is a wheel of limburger, his mouth a piece 
of bacon, his eyes two green olives. 

But the volume is much more concerned with the workings of books 
than the exploits of characters. The narrator, Jack, makes himself visible to 
the reader, and he continually intrudes on the various stories he is "supposed 
to" share with us, by offering editorial remarks and showing up in the 
artwork. He argues against the necessity of a title page (because he has 
mistakenly placed one in the book upside down); he admits to padding his 
introduction to the stories "so it [fills] up the page and [makes] it look like I 
really [know] what [I'm] talking about"; his rendition of "Chicken Little" is 
cut short because the inadvertently omitted table of contents—rather than the 
sky—falls down on the characters. 

Throughout the volume, Jack badgers and is badgered by the characters 
of other well-known tales—generally because he isn't telling their stories the 
"right" way. As he introduces the tale of "Little Red Running Shorts," for 
example, he accidentally "gives away" the entire plot: 

This next story is . . . about this girl who runs very fast and 
always wears red running shorts….That's where her name comes 
from, get it? So anyway, this girl is running to her granny's house 
when she meets a wolf. He tricks her into taking the long way 
while he takes the shortcut. ...Red runs so fast that she beats the 
wolf to granny's house. He knocks on the door. Red answers it. 
And guess what she says? "My, what slow feet you have." And 
that's it. The End. Is that great or what? So sit back, relax and 
enjoy—"Little Red Running Shorts." And now like I already 
said—"Little Red Running Shorts." 

Jack is interrupted at this point by Red Running Shorts herself and the wolf—
who appear at the bottom of the page, walking away from Jack. "You just 
told the whole story," Red tells him. "We're not going to tell it again." "You 
can't say that," Jack objects. "You have to start with 'Once upon a time'." "No 
way," replies the wolf. "You blew it. We're out of here." On the facing page 
is a drawing of granny's cottage: the spaces Red Running Shorts and the wolf 

14 



 

Postmodern Fairy Tales 

were to fill are white, and the following page is blank. Unfortunately, Jack 
had budgeted three pages for the saga of the characters that have gone "on 
strike. " 

Elsewhere, too, the pictures call attention to themselves as pictures, the 
same way the stories call attention to themselves as stories. One especially 
intricate picture about pictures that appears in The Stinky Cheese Man, in fact, 
sums up what these "postmodern fairy tales" are all about. Midway through 
the book we learn that Jack the narrator is one and the same with Jack the boy 
who trades his cow for magic beans in the traditional "Jack and the 
Beanstalk." As Jack launches his tale—"the best story in the whole book," of 
course—the giant intrudes and demands that he be allowed to share a tale of 
his own creation. This creation turns out to be an enormous, visually arresting 
pastiche: the ogre has cut up a number of storybooks and pasted the pieces 
together randomly. 

The giant's collage spans two pages. The left page consists of phrases 
taken from many texts, each in a different typeface: "THE END/ of the evil 
stepmother/ said 'I'll HUFF and SNUFF and/ give you three wishes.' / The 
beast changed into/ SEVEN DWARVES/ HAPPILY EVER AFTER/ for a 
spell had been cast by a Wicked Witch/ Once upon a time." On the facing 
page, drawings that correspond to the texts from which these lines have been 
taken—and drawings that would appear alongside other texts, as well—have 
been put together to form a large male figure. We can make out Aladdin's 
lamp, Cinderella's glass slipper, a black cat, a blackbird emerging from a pie, 
a wolf's ears, Pinocchio's nose, a donkey, a witch, a red rose, a drawing of 
Aesop, Puss in Boots, a half-eaten apple, a tin man, a gingerbread man, a 
harp, a crown, and a golden egg. The message is clear: every story is a 
hodgepodge of other stories; we all have our own ways of piecing the same 
materials together. 

Other volumes feature pictures that call attention to themselves in more 
subtle ways. In The Frog Prince Continued (whose cover is a painting of a 
book cover) and The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs (whose cover depicts the 
front page of a newspaper), the illustrations rarely fill an entire page, as they 
do in many children's picture books. Instead, a picture that covers approxi-
mately three-quarters of a page appears above or below the text to which it 
corresponds, and the illustration is framed by an elegantly ragged border or 
deckle edge. And frequently, this frame is broken: as the Frog Prince flees a 
potential persecutor, for example, his right foot and left elbow extend past the 
borders for the illustration, and in the background, smoke curls from the 
chimney of a witch's house and drifts out above the picture's top boundary. 
Sometimes, however, things are reversed, so that the pictures are framed by 
the words on the page—as when the second witch offers the Frog Prince the 

15 



 

Cox 

remains of Snow White's poisoned apple. (Interestingly enough, the drawing 
of the apple recalls that which appears in the Disney version of "Snow 
White," in the visual equivalent of a parody's reference to a "real" version of a 
tale.) 

In myriad other ways, too, these "sequels" to traditional stories are self-
reflexive and intertextual. Most important, they figuratively go about the 
business of standing on end some of our most treasured fairy tales. By taking 
up where such tales leave off or re-viewing the adventures of established 
characters whose journeys we have traveled many times, the authors of these 
books are not simply contributing to a body of literature; they are taking that 
literature itself as their subject and calling into question that literature-along 
with the nature of all history, tradition, and truth. 

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs is A. Wolf's attempt to "set the record 
straight." Directly addressing his audience, he begins: "Everybody knows the 
story of the Three Little Pigs. Or at least they think they do. But I'll let you in 
on a little secret. Nobody knows the real story, because nobody has heard my 
side of the story." He remarks, "I don't know how this whole Big Bad Wolf 
thing got started, but it's all wrong"—and then explains that "Way back in 
Once Upon a Time time" he had set out to make a birthday cake for his dear 
old granny; a sneezing fit and the need for a borrowed cup of sugar set in 
motion a series of events that resulted in the destruction of the porky trio's 
homes. 

And in a book from the Birch Lane Press series of "Upside Down Tales," 
we get "two-books-in one." Read the first time through, "the traditional story 
of Cinderella is brought to life through glorious illustrations"; turn the book 
the other way around, and we see Cinderella: The Untold Story, as narrated 
by one of the allegedly wicked stepsisters. In this "variant," our narrator tells 
us that "Cinderella changed [the real story] a good bit. [She was] pretty and 
smart, but she had one very bad habit. She liked to make up stories." 
According to Dora, Cinderella is the one whose behavior was bad: "[She] was 
always in trouble for telling stories. Her father made her stand in the comer by 
the fireplace for punishment. She stood there so often, getting cinders in her 
hair, that one day she cried, 'You might as well call me Cinderella!' That's 
how she really got her name." Dora also apprises her readers of the following 
facts: Cinderella's father actually gave her the gown and slippers she wore to 
the ball; her own carelessness resulted in the loss of her slipper; and she 
mistook the Prince's second cousin for the Prince himself. She did marry this 
royal cousin, we are told, in a brilliant bit of meta-narration: he shared Cindy's 
tendency to embellish stories, so together, they did live happily ever after, 
having "gone into the fairy tale business" to "make up all sorts of wonderful 
stories and tell them to the children of the kingdom." 

16 



 

Postmodern Fairy Tales 

The Frog Prince Continued is concerned with similar reversals: joy turns 
to sorrow, and so the "good guy" must seek out the bad. Shortly after their 
wedding, the formerly amphibian prince and his royal bride discover that 
oddly enough they were happier together when they were members of 
different species. To rectify the situation, the Frog Prince sets out to find 
someone who can reverse his transformation. Over the course of his search 
through the woods, he meets characters from four other stories, and these 
characters supply the complications which always mark the journey of a fairy-
tale hero. The trouble caused by his antagonists is unique, though: removed 
from their proper context, they are confused and incompetent; they needlessly 
threaten the prince. 

Each sorceress is baffled when the Prince refers to himself as a frog, but 
each shrugs off the confusion to threaten him via a reference to another fairy 
tale. Luckily, the Prince possesses a wealth of fairy-tale knowledge which 
saves him from getting into desperate straits. He wisely flees when the first 
old crone greets his request for a spell by saying: "I'll have to cast a nasty 
spell on you. I can't have any princes waking up Sleeping Beauty before the 
hundred years are up." The next responds with, "I can't have any princes 
rescuing Snow White. Here—eat the rest of this apple"; at this, the prince 
knows he'd best hurry off. He is once more on the run when the third witch 
reveals that she is expecting Hansel and Gretel for dinner. 

Finally, the prince does find someone who can help him, and this 
character, too, belongs to another fairy story: he meets a Fairy Godmother 
who tells him she is "on the way to see a girl in the village about going to a 
ball." She accidentally turns him into a broken-down carriage, but with 
another nod toward the tale of "Cinderella," a clock in the village eventually 
strikes midnight, and the prince is again human. He runs home by the light of 
the moon, vowing to make the best of his lot with the princess, who after all 
"had believed in him when no one else had." Love is all he needs: when he 
returns to the castle and kisses his wife with renewed passion, they both turn 
into frogs and "hop off happily ever after." 

Critics of Märchen have for decades examined and evaluated the strong 
sense of order that prevails throughout virtually all of fairy-tale literature, 
attributing to this orderliness the great appeal of such stories over vast time 
and space. In his well-known work on the subject, Bruno Bettelheim notes 
that evil wishes always have bad consequences but good will can always set 
things right: "The fairy tale's example provides assurance that the child will 
receive help in his endeavors. . . and that eventual success will reward his 
sustained efforts" (71-73). And in his extensive writings on these matters, 
Max Luthi contends, "fairy tales are experienced by their hearers and readers 
as . . . symbolic poetry" (66); taking in these tales, the children see the basic 

17 



 

Cox 

conflict of good versus evil and come away with the message that "all 
[desirable] things are possible"—"all sorts of miracles can occur"; "the lowest 
can rise to the highest position"; "those in the highest position can fall and be 
destroyed" (138); the genuine will win out over the inauthentic. 

So what are we to make of "postmodern" renderings of fairy stories in 
which chaos is the order of the day? We can't take any reassurance from 
books containing stories in which there are no simple truths, no guarantees—
where one character's reality is another's "myth." In the politically correct 90s 
there are no villains, only misunderstood, unlucky innocents. There isn't any 
magic, either—at most, if we're lucky, we might be allowed to borrow 
Daddy's credit cards. And forget neat and tidy conclusions in which any 
conflicts are resolved-in the postmodern world, there's no such thing as a 
"happy ending" because there are no endings at all: there is always another 
perspective or installment; life insists on moving forward. 

Certainly, the smaller scale implications for any sort of fanciful literature 
are somewhat grim: Can we take much delight in fairy tales if 1) we're told 
that more fun than hearing or reading them is ridiculing their "fairly stupid" 
content and 2) we see that the creative process is only hindered by the 
adherence to fiction's formal conventions? 

I don't mean to suggest that fairy tales are to be regarded with hushed 
reverence or that all of civilization hangs in the balance if we poke a little fun 
at them. In the end, the "postmodern" picture books do not stray so very far 
from tradition: each of their protagonists still must make journey; each still 
must pass three tests or endure three trials; each ultimately arrives safely 
home (except for A. Wolf, who appears on the last page garbed in prison 
stripes). These books I've described are clever and colorful and a great deal of 
fun. And they might well encourage their juvenile audience to ask some 
important questions about who we are and what we do when we read, as do 
the adult fictions that these unusual storybooks recall. I wonder, though, if we 
really need hip three and four-year-olds who can appreciate irony. I do think 
enchantment continues to have its uses. 

Belmont University 
Nashville. Tennessee 

Notes 

1. A version of this paper was presented at the 1993 AFS meeting in Eugene, 
Oregon. 

18 



 

Postmodern Fairy Tales 

Works Cited 

Ahlberg, Janet, and Allan Ahlberg. The Jolly Postman or Other People's Letters. 
 Boston: Little, Brown, 1986. 
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of 
 Fairy tales. New York: Knopf,1976. 
Luthi, Max. Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales. Trans. Lee 

Chadeayne and Paul Gottwald. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1976. 
Scieszka, Jon. The Frog Prince Continued. New York: Viking, 1991. 
_______. The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. New York: Viking, 1989. 
Scieszka, Jon, and Lane Smith. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid 

Tales. New York: Viking, 1992. 
Shorto, Russell. Cinderella: The Untold Story. New York: Birch Lane, 1990. 

19 



 

Children's Folklore Section 
1993 Annual Meeting 

President Joe Edgette called the 1993 meeting of the Children's 
Folklore Section to order at 7:10 a.m., Friday, October 29. The 
minutes of the 1992 meeting were approved. 

Secretary-Treasurer Danielle Roemer reported that the Section's 
bank account (as of August 31,1993) contained $14,373.17. This 
amount included $7804.93 in the Newell Prize Endowment and 
$6568.57 in the general operating fund. 

Review editor Chip Sullivan reported that East Carolina University 
currently contributes $1900.00 a year toward publication of the 
Review, a contribution for which the section is very grateful. 
Currently, the Review costs $700-800 per issue to produce. 

According to Archivist Simon Bronner, the materials in the 
Section's archives are growing slowly—but they are growing. 
Children's folklore files donated by Mac E. Barrick are being added 
to the archive. The archive will also be happy to accept student 
papers dealing with children's folklore. 

Joe Edgette announced that there were no submissions for the 1993 
Newell Prize; hence, no prize was given. Also, no Opie Prize was 
awarded for 1993. 

On behalf of the prize committee, Linda Morley reported that there 
were 134 nominations for the Aesop Prize, twice as many as in the 
previous year. The two co-winners of the 1992-1993 Aesop Prize 
are: 

1. Love Flute. Written and illustrated by Paul Goble. New 
York: Bradbury Press, 1992. 

2. Cut from the Same Cloth: American Women in Myth, 
Legend, and Tall Tale. Written by Robert D. San Souci and 
illustrated by Brian Pinkney. New York: Bradbury Press, 
1993. 

The Aesop Prize Committee also proposed an Aesop Accolade List 
and named six titles to it for the 1992-1993 year. Recognized for 
special achievement are: 

20 



 

Children' s Folklore Section 

1. Ishi’s Tale of Lizard. Written by Leanne Hinton and 
Susan Roth. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1992. 

2. Northern Lights: The Soccer Trails. Written by Michael 
Arvaarluk Kusugak and illustrated by Vladyana Krykorka. 
Buffalo: Annick Press, 1993. 

3. Sundiata: Lion King of Mali. Written and illustrated by 
David Wisniewski. New York: Clarion Press, 1993. 

4. Surtsey: The Newest Place on Earth. Written by Kathryn 
Lasky with photographs by Christopher G. Knight. New 
York: Hyperion Books, 1992. 

5. The Green Gourd: A North Carolina Folktale. Retold by 
C.W.Hunter and illustrated by Tony Griego. A Whitebird 
Book. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992. 

6. Big Man, Big Country: A Collection of American Tall 
Tales. Edited and retold by Paul Robert Walker and 
illustrated by James Bernardin. San Diego: Harcourt, 
Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1993. 

On behalf of the Lifetime Achievement Award Committee, Priscilla Ord 
announced that Roger Pinon has been named as the Section's 1993 recipient 
of the Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Under Old Business, Chip Sullivan reported on his continuing quest for 
material to be used on the Section's proposed t-shirts. He has located a 
portrait photograph of W.W. Newell from the Harvard University Archives. 
(The photograph appeared on the cover of the fall 1993 issue of the Review.) 
Chip proposed that this photograph be used on the front of the t-shirt with the 
words "Children's Folklore Section" on either the front or the back of the 
shirt. Members present offered various suggestions. By consensus, they 
agreed that Chip should continue his investigations and report again at the 
1994 meeting. 

Priscilla Ord passed around possible designs for the Aesop Prize medallion 
sticker (which the publishers will purchase from the Section and attach to the 

21 



 

Children's Folklore Section 

front cover of the Aesop Award-winning book). The members present 
discussed the offered designs and agreed that the Executive Board, with input 
from the membership, should decide on the particular design to be used. 

Nominations were then opened for the office of President-Elect. Margaret 
Read MacDonald was nominated and elected by acclamation. 

Under New Business, incoming President Carole H. Carpenter proposed the 
re-appointment of Chip Sullivan as Review Editor and Simon Bronner as 
Archivist. The re-appointments were moved, seconded, and passed unani-
mously. 

Chip Sullivan announced that Laurie Evans would continue to serve as 
Associate Editor of the Review and would assist with matters of editing, 
layout, and production. The Executive Board reported its recommendation 
that the Associate Editor receive an honorarium of $100.00 per issue for her 
work. The recommendation was moved, seconded, and passed. 

Mailing costs for the Review were discussed, and a motion was made, 
seconded, and passed to add $5.00 for the members outside the U.S. who 
want their copies of CFR airmailed. Dues will remain $10.00 for those 
willing to wait for surface mail. 

Priscilla Ord advised those present that the Aesop Medallion artist Richard 
McClintoch needed to be paid for the rights to his medallion designs. The 
Executive Board proposed remuneration of $200.00. The proposal was 
moved, seconded, and passed. 

The Aesop Prize Committee for 1993-1994 will consist of Linda Morley and 
Carole Carpenter (co-chairs) as well as new member Ruth Stotter, who 
replaces outgoing member Gary Alan Fine. Each committee member serves a 
three-year term. 

Carole Carpenter advised those present of a special issue of the Joumal of the 
Canadian Children's Literature Association. This publication (which at the 
time of the present writing has actually been expanded to two issues) deals 
with reworkings of fairy tales. The journal is produced at Guelph University, 
Guelph, Ontario, Canada. 

22 



 

Children's Folklore Section 

On behalf of herself and her co-author, Graham Seal, Gwenda Davey 
announced the recent publication of their book, The Oxford Companion to 
Australian Folklore. 

Priscilla Ord reminded those present of the 1994 meeting of the Children's 
Literature Association to be held at Southwest Missouri State University, 
Springfield, Missouri, June 2-5. 

Those present were also reminded of the 1993 AFS Section-sponsored 
Children's Folklore Panel, "The Folklorist's Responsibility to the Child." The 
panel was organized and will be chaired by Margaret Read MacDonald. It 
will be held on Friday, October 29, 1993, from 1:15-3:00 p.m. The 
participants are: 

1. Priscilla A. Ord (Longwood College), "Alvin Schwartz (1927-1992): A 
Retrospective of a Modern Day Pied Piper." 
2. Kay Stone (University of Winnipeg), "Child as Story-Maker." 
3. Carole H. Carpenter (York University), "Developing an Appreciation for 
the Cultural Significance of Childlore." 
4. Margaret Read MacDonald (King County Library), "A Folktale Goes to 
the Inauguration. " 
5. Discussant: Ruth Stotter (Tiburon, California). 

Simon Bronner then raised the question of a Section-sponsored panel at the 
1994 AFS meeting. Carole Carpenter agreed to organize the panel. 

The meeting was adjourned at 8:00 a.m. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Danielle M. Roemer 
Secretary -Treasurer 

23 



 

Notes and Announcements 

The Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society 
annually offers the W.W. Newell Prize (which includes a cash award of 
$350.00) for the best undergraduate or graduate student essay on a topic 
in children's folklore. Students must submit their own papers, and 
published papers are eligible. Instructors are asked to encourage students 
with eligible papers to enter the competition. 

Papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. On the 
first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, 
and telephone numbers. Deadline for each year's competition is March 
1st. 

Submit papers or write for additional information: Joe Edgette, 509 
Academy Avenue, Glenolden, PA 19036. 

Contributors 

Cynthia Anne Cox is in the Department of Literature and Language at 
Belmont University in Nashville where she is currently completing a 
dissertation on using folklore to teach critical writing. She is also 
working on a textbook on the same subject. 

Kay Stone, a storyteller as well as a university professor, is in the 
English Department at the University of Winnipeg and was one of the 
founding members of the Children's Folklore Section of the American 
Folklore Society. 

24 



 
 
 
 
 

The Children’s Folklore Review is available only to members of  
the Children’s Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society. 
To become a member, send $10.00 yearly dues to Danielle 
Roemer, Literature and Language, Northern Kentucky Univer- 
Sity, Highland Heights, KY 41076.  Dues are $15.00 for non-U.S. 
members who wish airmail delivery of CFR; non-U.S. members 
Wishing surface mail delivery of CFR will still pay $10.00 yearly 
dues  
 
CFR requests manuscripts that are prepared using laser printed 
text or letter quality text.  We request that authors using typewrit- 
ers or dot-matrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a  
laser printed copy made.  This will enable us to scan the copy, 
thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. 
 
Please send manuscripts to: 
  C.W. Sullivan III, Editor 
  Children’s Folklore Review 
  Department of English 
  East Carolina University 
  Greenville, NC 27858-4353 
 
 
 
Children’s Folklore Review is published twice a year and sent to 
all members of the Children’s Folklore Section of the American  
Folklore Society. 
 
  
 Published by East Carolina University 
  ISSN:  0739-5558 
 Copyright © 1994 Children’s Folklore Section 


	CFR Editorial Board
	C.W. Sullivan III, Editor
	Judith Haut, Book Review Editor
	2733 Halsey Road
	Topanga, CA 90290
	Jay Mechling
	American Studies
	University of California-Davis
	Davis, CA 95616
	Priscilla A. Ord
	Department of English, Philosophy, and Modern Languages
	Longwood College
	Farmville, VA 23901
	Laurie Evans, Associate Editor
	2060 Quail Ridge Road
	Greenville, NC 27858
	Child as Story-Maker
	Postmodern Fairy Tales




