For some reason, my post about Hans-My-Hedgehog has this week attracted some three hundred spam comments, which I have been deleting by the bucketload. It’s led me to write a big long list of no-go keywords that this blog will look for in a comment and cage in a kind of virtual quarantine. That list is officially the filthiest thing I’ve ever written (maybe the filthiest thing I’ve ever read), and has taken so much time composing I’m a bit off the pace for the next fairy story post. All the same there were a few interesting pieces among the countless adverts for online pharmacies.
If somehow you have the good fortune not to have to look at this stuff daily, it’s all composed randomly by computers, a kind of crass Dada about investment opportunities and the latest fertility drugs. Most of it consists of lists the spamming software cobbles together, but once in a while you get a piece that grabs several sections of text from articles across the internet, mashes them together, and sticks them on your blog. Amongst these posts you get the odd rare gem, where things have gone full circle and turned into a kind of literary collage. My favourite ever piece was something I received when I worked in Blackwells. I wish I’d saved it: it was a mash-up of The Lord of the Rings and The Song of Songs. Gandalf telling Frodo what a fine fellow he was, mixed up with ancient Hebrew love poetry.
This piece, then, isn’t quite as amazing, but I was pleased that it had accidentally matched itself to a post about a Brothers Grimm story. It’s drawn mostly on an article about children’s literature (there was some debate in the press this week about whether kids’ books are getting too gritty) and mixed it up with a dash of self-help and some end-of-the-world stuff. I think it actually has something to say about fairy stories. Enjoy…
In the seventh heaven endings make for more reading.
The rose-tinted on cloud nine of Blyton is often criticised and I tip my primordial headmistress being darned sniffy near the Illustrious Five novels and Malory Towers, but I credit this framer with my own lifelong passion in return books. There are currently six on my bedside table and another on my desk waiting to be read.
At the age of 10 I wouldn’t partake of wanted to impute to less distressed children growing up unloved in single-parent families or stories about drugs or the death of someone close. There’s occasion satisfactorily destined for gritty realism in later life. Children shouldn’t have planned to confront up to the legitimate elated too near the start in their lives. A handful magical fairy tales or heartwarming fleshly stories do them no hurt at all and equanimous in a brand-new storybook station in an urban aspect there’s area an eye to the main character to overcome the odds, status quo the endearing ideal, clear up the mystery, be the victor in the preparation or coextensive with abolished to the ball.
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