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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Education THE EMERGENCE OF FAIRY TALE LITERACY: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY ON PROMOTING CRITICAL LITERACY OF CHILDREN THROUGH A JUXTAPOSED READING OF CLASSIC FAIRY TALES AND THEIR CONTEMPORARY DISRUPTIVE VARIANTS A Dissertation in Curriculum & Instruction by Chieh-Lan Li 2010 Chieh-Lan Li Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2010 The dissertation of Chieh-Lan Li was reviewed and approved* by the following: Daniel Hade Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction Dissertation Advisor Co-Chair of Committee Jacqueline Reid-Walsh Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction and Women’s Studies Co-Chair of Committee Jamie Myers Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction Bénédicte Monicat Professor of French and Women’s Studies Glendon Blume Professor of Curriculum & Instruction Coordinator of Graduate Programs in Curriculum & Instruction *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Children nowadays perceive fairy tales from a number of sources; however, the strongest prior impressions toward this genre held by most youngsters are still built on the popular mass media-based adaptations such as the animated films or books of fairy- tale retellings by the Walt Disney Company. In order to make a change to such an undesirable situation, I suggest exposing them to a great variety of fairy tales as the one and only way to broaden their repertoire and to develop their critical thinking ability toward the genre. Classic versions of fairy tales have long been censored for their elements assumed inappropriate for children by adults such as violence and thus been discounted from the formal elementary curriculum. However, from the interviews I conducted for this study, children’s responses disputed such a false adult assumption. To deprive children of the opportunity to read these older texts is actually to prevent an important way to increase their knowledge regarding the genre’s origin. The fresh aspects of these earlier versions unfamiliar to youngsters who have already known roughly about the stories can stimulate their previous recognition and enhance their apprehension of fairy tales. Therefore, I strongly recommend that educators of children use traditional fairy tales as the first step to promote their critical literacy. Moreover, in the field of children’s literature, there has been a common tendency to rewrite old fairy tales and bestow them with new possibilities in the past two decades. Many children’s books are retellings of fairy tales using various strategies to overturn or disrupt the stereotypical impressions established through preexistent stories. Such a new iv kind of fairy tales functions as a “second chance” for children to question their prior perceptions toward the genre. By introducing them systematically with a juxtaposed reading of these contemporary disruptive variants with the classic versions, we can let children start to reflect and examine the stock knowledge they have held as truth about fairy tales so as to actualize the purpose of promoting critical literacy and further lead to the emergence of their fairy tale literacy. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .....................................................................................................viii LIST OF TABLES.......................................................................................................ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.........................................................................................x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................1 Application of Fairy Tales in Educating Children................................................1 Definition of Fairy Tales ......................................................................................2 Research Proposition ............................................................................................4 Typology of Contemporary Disruptive Fairy Tales ............................................12 A Juxtaposition of Fairy Tales to Promote Critical Literacy of Children ............17 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW & THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .........20 Literature Review .................................................................................................20 Theoretical Framework.........................................................................................29 CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .........................................................37 Research Structure and Methods ..........................................................................37 Research Procedures.............................................................................................41 Means of Data Analysis........................................................................................45 CHAPTER 4 LITERARY TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ..................................................51 Interview 1—“Cinderella”; “Sleeping Beauty”....................................................52 “Cinderella”...................................................................................................53 “Cendrillon, or The Little Glass Slipper” (Perrault)...............................55 “Cinderella” (Grimms)............................................................................57 Prince Cinders (Cole).............................................................................59 Cinderella Bigfoot (Thaler and Lee).......................................................61 “Sleeping Beauty” .........................................................................................63 “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” (Perrault) ......................................63 “Briar Rose” (Grimms)...........................................................................65 Sleeping Bobby (Osborne, Osborne and Potter) .....................................67 Sleeping Ugly (Yolen and Stanley).........................................................68 Interview 2—“Little Red Riding Hood”; “Three Little Pigs”; “Snow White”…..71 “Little Red Riding Hood”..............................................................................72 “Little Red Riding Hood” (Perrault).......................................................73 vi “Little Red Cap” (Grimms).....................................................................74 The Wolf's Story (Forward and Cohen)...................................................76 “Three Little Pigs”.........................................................................................78 “The Story of the Three Little Pigs” (Jacobs).........................................79 The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! (Scieszka and Smith)......................80 “Snow White”................................................................................................83 “Snow White” (Grimms) ........................................................................84 “The Seventh Dwarf” (Hessel) ...............................................................86 Interview 3—“Hansel and Gretel” and “The Frog Prince” ..................................87 “Hansel and Gretel” ......................................................................................89 “Hansel and Gretel” (Grimms) ...............................................................89 “A Delicate Architecture” (Valente).......................................................90 “The Frog Prince”..........................................................................................93 “The Frog King or Iron Heinrich” (Grimms) .........................................93 The Frog Prince Continued (Scieszka and Johnson)..............................95 A Juxtaposition of Old and New Fairy-Tale Texts ..............................................98 CHAPTER 5 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS (PART I) ..................................100 Background Information of My Research Participants .......................................100 Participant 1: Li-Kwen ..................................................................................100 Participant 2: Ning-Ning ...............................................................................101 Participant 3: Rafiki.......................................................................................102 Participant 4: Wendy ...................................................................................103 Children’s Prior Knowledge of Fairy Tales .........................................................104 Defining the Genre of Fairy Tales.................................................................104 Identifying Fairy-Tale Characters .................................................................113 Princesses................................................................................................113 Princes.....................................................................................................118 Witches ...................................................................................................122 Previous Mental Images of Fairy-Tale Characters .................................124 CHAPTER 6 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS (PART II).................................128 Children’s Perceptions toward Classic Versions of Fairy Tales .........................128 Fresh Aspects of Classic Fairy-Tale Versions ..............................................128 Violence and Justice in Classic Fairy-Tale Versions ....................................135