Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Macmillan Publishing Company
Pages
79
Description
A humorous retelling of classic bedtime stories, such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs, re-written to free them, according to the author, from the influences of "a flawed cultural past."
Description
Barcode is inside back cover.
My Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times is a 1994 book written by American writer James Finn Garner, in which Garner satirizes the trend toward political correctness and censorship of children's literature, with an emphasis on humour and parody.[1] The bulk of the book consists of fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs and Snow White, rewritten so that they represent what a politically correct adult would consider a good and moral tale for children.
The revisions include extensive usage of politically correct buzzwords (and parodies thereof), deliberately stiff moralizing dialogue and narration, inclusion of modern concepts and objects (such as health spas, mineral water, and automobiles), and often feature a plot twist that reverses the roles of the heroes and villains of the story (for example, the woodsman in Little Red Riding Hood is seen by Red Riding Hood not as a heroic saviour but as a "sexist" and "speciesist" interloper, and Snow White's evil stepmother ends up with a positive portrayal while the prince and the seven dwarves are portrayed as chauvinistic).
Table of Contents:
Little Red Riding Hood
The Emperor's New Clothes
The Three Little Pigs
Rumpelstiltskin
The Three Codependent Goats Gruff
Rapunzel
Cinderella
Goldilocks
Snow White
Chicken Little
The Frog Prince
Jack and the Beanstalk
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
My Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times is a 1994 book written by American writer James Finn Garner, in which Garner satirizes the trend toward political correctness and censorship of children's literature, with an emphasis on humour and parody.[1] The bulk of the book consists of fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs and Snow White, rewritten so that they represent what a politically correct adult would consider a good and moral tale for children.
The revisions include extensive usage of politically correct buzzwords (and parodies thereof), deliberately stiff moralizing dialogue and narration, inclusion of modern concepts and objects (such as health spas, mineral water, and automobiles), and often feature a plot twist that reverses the roles of the heroes and villains of the story (for example, the woodsman in Little Red Riding Hood is seen by Red Riding Hood not as a heroic saviour but as a "sexist" and "speciesist" interloper, and Snow White's evil stepmother ends up with a positive portrayal while the prince and the seven dwarves are portrayed as chauvinistic).
Table of Contents:
Little Red Riding Hood
The Emperor's New Clothes
The Three Little Pigs
Rumpelstiltskin
The Three Codependent Goats Gruff
Rapunzel
Cinderella
Goldilocks
Snow White
Chicken Little
The Frog Prince
Jack and the Beanstalk
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Collection
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1994-04
Physical description
79 p.; 7.3 inches
ISBN
002542730X / 9780025427303
Similar in this library
User reviews
LibraryThing member neringros
Could this book have been written better? Definitely, but I found it really funny and a great satire on the absurdity of the whole PC craziness! Makes me glad the fairy tales didn't actually get censored and politically corrected :)
Personally, I find nothing wrong with the old fairy tales. Taken in
Personally, I find nothing wrong with the old fairy tales. Taken in
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context, they illustrate the way of living and people's beliefs of the past very well. Are we going to re-write the history books as well? Political Correctness has it's place, but it needs to be politically correct itself and not try to re-write history/old folklore. Show Less
LibraryThing member jshillingford
Hysterically funny collection of "revised" fairy tales. Garner retells classic fairy tales, like Snow White, but takes politically correct language and terms to the 9th degree. Wonderful satire on people's often obsessive need to try and never offend anyone.
LibraryThing member nderdog
The politically correct movement had to invade our fairy tales sooner or later. An entertaining look at what our childhood stories would have been like had the PC people been in charge of the tellings. The 7 dwarfs are now vertically-challenged. Little Red Riding Hood doesn't need a man to save
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her. Rumpelstiltskin has quite a task in front of him. Show Less
LibraryThing member Heather19
I read this book a long, long time ago, at my grandparents house (okay okay, I was visiting for a week and I hid it in my room the entire time, being too young to be "allowed" to read that kind of stuff). I finally own it, and I must admit that now that I'm older, and understand "political
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correctness" better, it's even better then I remember. Show Less
LibraryThing member TadAD
Amusing takes on some favorite fairy tales.
LibraryThing member cyderry
How many of us as children heard the fairy tales Hansel & Gretel, Puss in Boots, and the Tortoise & the Hare? How many of us wanted to be the Princess & the Pea?(me), The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, or Goldilocks? Did we know at that time we were being exposed to sexist,
These alternate versions of the beloved "fairy tales" by Aesop, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, to name a few take a decidedly different turn when written from a politically correct angle. Who would believe that Snow White and her wicked stepmother would end up friends, or that the Tortoise would be disqualified after the race? These are but a few of unusual twists and turns that political correctness takes in these stories.
I heard about this books from Whisper1 and ran right out and got them from the library. Some of the tales are so funny I laughed till I cried, others not so much, but definitely worth the read. Thanks Whisper!
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discriminatory, culturally biased material by our parents and loved ones? Did we have any idea of how these "fairy tales" would affect our futures?These alternate versions of the beloved "fairy tales" by Aesop, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen, to name a few take a decidedly different turn when written from a politically correct angle. Who would believe that Snow White and her wicked stepmother would end up friends, or that the Tortoise would be disqualified after the race? These are but a few of unusual twists and turns that political correctness takes in these stories.
I heard about this books from Whisper1 and ran right out and got them from the library. Some of the tales are so funny I laughed till I cried, others not so much, but definitely worth the read. Thanks Whisper!
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LibraryThing member cameling
A laugh-out-loud quick read. It takes all our old favorite (or at least my favorite) bedtime stories such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, The Princess & the Pea, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Three Little Pigs among others and puts them in politically correct contexts with some slight changes in the
A re-reading keeper for those days when I need a quick pick-me-up in the laughs department.
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endings. Most definitely one of the funniest books I've read in a while.A re-reading keeper for those days when I need a quick pick-me-up in the laughs department.
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LibraryThing member the1butterfly
This is just as funny as it sounds- even those who aren't into fairy tales will enjoy the inherent humor. There are plenty of jokes not only about being excessively PC, but also about our modern ways of thinking we should live. The slight variants on the plot of many of the tales only serve to add
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to them. This is yet another addition to our re-imaginings of these tales that helps us rethink not only the tales themselves, but the tellers. Show Less
LibraryThing member Czrbr
Book Description: New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1994. Cloth. Fine/Near Fine. First Edition/Printing. 5.25 x 7.5. Clean and unmarked, Very nice copy, 79 pages.
Cream boards to the maroon cloth binding the titles in black to the spine..so's to make 'em difficult to read. A new copy. Tight
Cream boards to the maroon cloth binding the titles in black to the spine..so's to make 'em difficult to read. A new copy. Tight
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with no marks of any kind Show Less
LibraryThing member Neverwithoutabook
A delightful little romp through those familiar fairytales we all grew up with but this is not how we remember them. I found this politically correct version amusing, quick and light reading. Worth the effort.
LibraryThing member LilyEvans
You know, I really like parodies. I’ve read some parodies (online) of fairy tales and I’ve found them pretty funny. So imagine my disappointment when, after I spent two hours reading this short book, I felt nothing. There was nothing funny. The stories bored me. I didn’t feel it was worth my
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time. I also ordered the other books the author had written parodying fairy tales but didn’t bother after reading this book. A waste of time, unless you want a book that will put you to sleep (which it did). Show Less
LibraryThing member isabelx
A book containing a series of fairy tales re-written without sexist, heterosexist, ageist, sizeist, classist, speciesist or any other -ist bias. I read it in one evening, and found the way that the traditional versions of the stories had been warped to fit in with the politically correct agenda
I liked the version of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" - the children of Hamelin may not have vanished into a mountain, but in a political sense they were most definitely lost to their parents.
"As their children began to form tax protest groups and shooting clubs, the town councillors sadly realized that all their years of careful social planning would soon come to nothing. The next day, they found the public-address van on the outskirts of town, but there was no sign of the mysterious man whom they had tried to swindle."
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very amusing.I liked the version of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" - the children of Hamelin may not have vanished into a mountain, but in a political sense they were most definitely lost to their parents.
"As their children began to form tax protest groups and shooting clubs, the town councillors sadly realized that all their years of careful social planning would soon come to nothing. The next day, they found the public-address van on the outskirts of town, but there was no sign of the mysterious man whom they had tried to swindle."
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LibraryThing member BookRatMisty
If the Jon Scieszka tales were the great slapstick fairy tale parodies for kids, James Finn Garner's Politically Correct Bedtime Stories are what those same kids read when they're all grown up. Lampooning fairy tales and political correctness itself, these tales are utterly ridiculous and laugh out
Every single place in a story that anyone could possibly find fault, Garner has turned it on it's head and made it so PC as to be BS... (hence why I'm always abbreviating the series title as PC BS - I doubt that was unintentional on the author's part).
Take for example, Little Red Riding Hood, which opens the collection:
There once was a young person named Red Riding Hood who lived with her mother on the edge of a large wood. One day her mother asked her to take a basket of fresh fruit to her grandmother's house - not because this was womyn's work, mind you, but because the deed was generous and helped engender a feeling of community. Furthermore, her grandmother was not sick, but was rather in full physical and mental health and was fully capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult.
So Red Riding Hood set off with her basket through the woods. Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place and never set foot in it. Red Riding Hood, however, was confident enough in her own budding sexuality that such obvious Freudian imagery did not intimidate her...
There are the obvious things, like the reference to the woods, but even silly little things like the spelling of "womyn" and the refusal to call Red "little" or a girl - this attention to detail and to flipping everything on its head is found through out.
The further along you read, the more it builds on itself and the more ridiculous and funny it gets. Consider later in the same story, when we get to Little Red's classic line "But Grandmother, what big teeth you have!" The wolf's reaction?
"I am happy with who I am and what I am!"
and he prepares to eat Red, as always. And the Woodsman bursts in, of course, but does not get his usual welcome reception. Instead he is called a sexist and a speciesist for "bursting in like a Neandrathal" and expecting his weapon to do the thinking for him. Fit and active grandmother bursts up from the wolf's belly, out through his throat, and slays the Woodsman, whereupon she, Little Red and the wolf set up "an alternate household based on mutual respect and cooperation."
Each story ends more ridiculous than the last, all in the name of political correctness.
The naked emporer is just embracing a "clothing optional" lifestyle.
The witch in Rapunzel becomes Rapunzel's "momager," raking in the big bucks on Rapunzel's singing voice and good looks.
The spinner in Rumpelstiltskin "guesses" his name because he is still wearing his name badge from the "Little People's Empowerment Seminar."
The 3 little pigs shout insults at the wolf who is looking to take their land ("Your gunboat tactics hold no fear for pigs defending their home and culture!" "Go to hell, you carnivorous, imperialistic opressor!"), then sing protest songs as the wolf huffs and puffs - and falls down dead from heart attack brought on by too much fatty food.
It's all utterly ridiculous and good silly fun. And a super quick read, too, with each story only being 2-3 pages, and the whole book being less than 80. And though this type of humor is certainly not for everyone, if it is yours, I'd recommend picking this one up.
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loud funny. (Occasionally Scoff Out Loud, too...)Every single place in a story that anyone could possibly find fault, Garner has turned it on it's head and made it so PC as to be BS... (hence why I'm always abbreviating the series title as PC BS - I doubt that was unintentional on the author's part).
Take for example, Little Red Riding Hood, which opens the collection:
There once was a young person named Red Riding Hood who lived with her mother on the edge of a large wood. One day her mother asked her to take a basket of fresh fruit to her grandmother's house - not because this was womyn's work, mind you, but because the deed was generous and helped engender a feeling of community. Furthermore, her grandmother was not sick, but was rather in full physical and mental health and was fully capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult.
So Red Riding Hood set off with her basket through the woods. Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place and never set foot in it. Red Riding Hood, however, was confident enough in her own budding sexuality that such obvious Freudian imagery did not intimidate her...
There are the obvious things, like the reference to the woods, but even silly little things like the spelling of "womyn" and the refusal to call Red "little" or a girl - this attention to detail and to flipping everything on its head is found through out.
The further along you read, the more it builds on itself and the more ridiculous and funny it gets. Consider later in the same story, when we get to Little Red's classic line "But Grandmother, what big teeth you have!" The wolf's reaction?
"I am happy with who I am and what I am!"
and he prepares to eat Red, as always. And the Woodsman bursts in, of course, but does not get his usual welcome reception. Instead he is called a sexist and a speciesist for "bursting in like a Neandrathal" and expecting his weapon to do the thinking for him. Fit and active grandmother bursts up from the wolf's belly, out through his throat, and slays the Woodsman, whereupon she, Little Red and the wolf set up "an alternate household based on mutual respect and cooperation."
Each story ends more ridiculous than the last, all in the name of political correctness.
The naked emporer is just embracing a "clothing optional" lifestyle.
The witch in Rapunzel becomes Rapunzel's "momager," raking in the big bucks on Rapunzel's singing voice and good looks.
The spinner in Rumpelstiltskin "guesses" his name because he is still wearing his name badge from the "Little People's Empowerment Seminar."
The 3 little pigs shout insults at the wolf who is looking to take their land ("Your gunboat tactics hold no fear for pigs defending their home and culture!" "Go to hell, you carnivorous, imperialistic opressor!"), then sing protest songs as the wolf huffs and puffs - and falls down dead from heart attack brought on by too much fatty food.
It's all utterly ridiculous and good silly fun. And a super quick read, too, with each story only being 2-3 pages, and the whole book being less than 80. And though this type of humor is certainly not for everyone, if it is yours, I'd recommend picking this one up.
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LibraryThing member HotWolfie
This was an amusing book to read through once. I had a blast looking over the stories. It's a good, satirical look at the fairy tale genre. For a short read it's not bad. I would recommend reading it at least once. You'll remember it.
LibraryThing member benuathanasia
I'm assuming it's supposed to be satire, but it takes itself so seriously it comes across as pretentious shite.
LibraryThing member AliceAnna
What a hoot! My favorite was Snow White and the Vertically-Challenged Bearded Men. I think it was the mother-of-step who was morally out of the mainstream until she learned to accept her natural body image. Or perhaps it was the prince's involuntary suspension from phallocentric activity
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(impotence) that sold me. But then again the Frog Prince who was a real estate developer was good too. As was the Pied Piper of Hamalin, retained to rid the town of trailer-park trash. It was funny! Show Less
LibraryThing member ChrisWeir
A politically correct look at fairy tales we all grew up with. Puss N Boots who turns out to actually be the brains behind a politician, ,until the politician comes clean. A really weird take on the Little Mermaid which has the Price coming to live under the sea. The Tortoise and the Hare in which
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the Hare takes on too many endorsements, as well as a few other issues Fun tongue and cheek look at fairy tales. Show Less
LibraryThing member AltheaAnn
Very slim volume - only took about an hour to read.
These are short retellings of classic fairy tales, complete with twists and sly asides, poking fun of - or maybe just paying tribute to - our 'enlightened' society. The brevity of the book is probably wise, as the joke does get repetitive after a
These are short retellings of classic fairy tales, complete with twists and sly asides, poking fun of - or maybe just paying tribute to - our 'enlightened' society. The brevity of the book is probably wise, as the joke does get repetitive after a
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while - but still, there are some clever turns of phrase and funny changes in plot - especially as far as punchlines. Definitely good for a few laughs. Show Less
LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
It would work better as a parody of a parody, I think. That is, Garner is obviously making fun of the politically correct movement. But he's doing so clumsily, imo. So, if one reads this as him being tongue-in-cheek, making fun of those who make fun of PC, then the book is a little funnier. Mainly
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I'm glad it was short. Show Less
LibraryThing member Emma_Manolis
This book is more for intelligent adults than small children. I throughly enjoyed reading through this and found myself laughing out loud on numerous occasions. If you want a light read and can laugh at society and what it has become then you will really enjoy reading this.
LibraryThing member suesbooks
This book, even as satire was so offensive, it took me months to read it hoping to find something worthwhile. The jokes made fun of different groups of people, and were not funny. Classes of people and people of color were all mocked. I have no idea why i owned this book.
Subjects
Call number
FIC I Gar