Are fairy tales obsolete?

The father of relativity Albert Einstein rightly said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." 

Are ‘Fairytales are obsolete’? Whatever happened to the world of a child’s imagination? Haven’t the best known story writers like J.K. Rowling written something as bizarre and magnificent as the Harry Potter and its myriad adventures? Whatever happened to the world and culture we are exposed to when we read Snow white and the seven dwarfs or when we enjoy the story of recent day fairytale of the Oger? Indeed, I am educating my mind and exercising my faculty of imaginative thinking and creative thought.

I have grown up hearing from grandparents that the best way to travel the globe and learn from the other cultures is a fairytale- different way of living, eating and doing things, cultural diversity in the world outside my own.

Moreover, let us not forget that all of us when we loved those bed time stories, we learned the morals of goodness winning over evil from Cinderella or how the Three Little Pigs were united in love and that brought about the downfall of the evil fox.

Whether an indirect moral lesson, fairytales bring forth a world of fun and good thoughts. Yes, there may be an evil sound here when mom would act it out to me or a dark jungle to cross as I would read it through my bed time stories. But for me, the problems of dealing with maybe a bully or a bad friend, I would associate with this dark path I have to cross. And I am sure you would do it as reassured as I am somewhere having faith that the dark path leads to a happy castle in the end.

The world of fairytales bring forth so much colour and fun that even the laptops and smart phones cannot. To top it all, we learn new words, enhance our vocabulary and also develop our listening, speaking and analytical skills, something the digital medium of games can never give us.

From the elves and their magical touch that changes the fortune of the shoemaker, to the way the pumkin becomes a carriage, I have learned to admire white mice who became Cinderella’s horses. I have learned to love the world of Harry Potter and his tryst to keep the magic school together. All in all, I am all for the world of fairytales.

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