Disney’s new Black mermaid has been called ‘inauthentic’ – but fairy tales have always been repurposed across cultures. And Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid was different from Disney’s.
There is nothing new about a shoe fetish. Fairy tales have long featured amazing, high-tech footwear: from seven-league boots to glass slippers to red shoes.
Children’s literature may be a modern genre, but there is a long history of writing for children with some surprisingly unchanging elements.
In the Fir Tree, children stamp on a discarded – but feeling – Christmas tree.
The Fir Tree, illustrated by George Dalziel and Edward Dalziel, from Out of the Heart: Spoken to the Little Ones, 1867
The Industrial Revolution choked English cities in smog, filled rivers with waste and spread disease in crowded cities. At the same time, fairy tales about humans destroying nature proliferated.