The other night a girl of about 12 came in and asked for the fairy tale section. I showed her. About half an hour later, she comes back and says that she wants real fairy tales, the ones I showed her are all "made up." I tell her that all fairy tales are made up. She gets increasingly agitated as she shows me our copy of Snow White (with gorgeous Tricia Schart Hyman illustrations), which is the story she wants, but again, it's "made up." She has to trace pictures of trees but there are no trees in it. Ahhh, the lightbulb goes off and I ask if she wants Disney's Snow White. Yes, she does. And that's precisely why why don't have Disney fairy tale books, because they're not actually "real" fairy tales, they're Disney stories. But our literary snobbery probably won't last too much longer - We are starting to get some Disney books (which I'm not pleased about and Cassie is almost pathologically disgusted by it) but they're mostly new movie ones and princessy ones. I guess I'll just have to try and make sure I really keep up our collection of "real" fairy tale books - maybe they'll be forced to take out something of actual quality when all of the Disney ones are signed out.
I know, I'm a snob. But I do buy all kinds of commercialized utter crap for my kids' collection, because that's what circulates. And I actually disagree with the "no crap" folks in our system, because I think there's value in reading crap for pleasure sometimes (I certainly do it). And yes, I know that the whole point of folk/fairy tales is that there are many versions, and I actually like the classic Disney movies - not so fond of the new ones - but if they become the "real" versions that kids know, I really think the fairytale tradition will lose a lot to mass-produced tiny-waisted princesses and changing everything to a happy ending.