3 ms·

As a kid in communist Romania, with basically no TV to watch, I spent much time reading whatever I could get my hands on, and fairly tales were a big part of th

As a kid in communist Romania, with basically no TV to watch, I spent much time reading whatever I could get my hands on, and fairly tales were a big part of the 'curricula', especially when I was younger. There's a series of books published here named 'Povești nemuritoare' (Immortal Fairytales) which were hugely popular back then with kids: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pove%C8%99ti_nemuritoare https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pove%C8%99ti_nemuritoare I don't think they were much sanitized if at all and some stories were really disturbing. I see that the emphasis on what to censor lays on violence (ex: hero cutting the head of the dragon, chopping off toes to fit in shoe, stabbing the groom) but that never bothered me as a kid, I barely noticed that to be honest. Probably because I had little realization in their gruesome meaning. But stories involving the inevitability of death disturbed me and there were a lot of them. One is Romanian, I fucking hated it: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinere%C8%9Be_f%C4%83r%C4%83_b%C4%83tr%C3%A2ne%C8%9Be_%C8%99i_via%C8%9B%C4%83_f%C4%83r%C4%83_de_moarte https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinere%C8%9Be_f%C4%83r%C4%83_b... Otherwise the stories tended to be grouped by source/nationality. Like "German stories" or "Arab stories" or "Chinese stories". If these were movies, German stories would be "action & adventure", Arab stories would be "comedy" (loved them) and Chinese ... "Horror and drama" :) If you want to traumatize your kids, give them unsanitized versions of Chinese fairy tales :)

anthk 2y ago
The Germans had 'The adventures of the Black Hand Gang', where the book was split in four mysteries to solve. In the left you had the narrative and a question/riddle to solve by looking up a big and detailled picture. Such as 'how did X main character guess that the bad guy stole something'? These books still hold up really well today with few changes.
- MichaelRo 2y ago
  Interesting, seems a modern book for kids. If we're at it, we can probably include Harry Potter and such? I would include then books such as the "Dunno" series (Neznayka in Russian) from Nikolai Nosov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno I read those books several times as a kid. In a pre-overly- technological society, those books are a sort of SciFi for kids, I was utterly fascinated by the contraptions and machinery employed by the little people. Particularly the car that ran on soda water and used syrup for lubricating, with a useful tap where you could get a glass of mixture to drink. By contrast, I visited the bookstore kids section a few times but seems inundated with dull, modern stories. Worse yet, I find such books on the obligatory reading list in school, there were such lists when I was a kid too but almost never read those because they suck. School is the worst selector of good literature.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    At least one of the Dunno books was set/written in an idyllic Kiev suburb at the time - Irpin.
  - anthk 2y ago
    I've seen some Spanish books from Spain written from Youtubers and the quality compared to what I've got in late 80's and 90's it's abhorrent. Even a cheap $3/3 EUR 'escape-room' book based on puzzles to solve it's far better than the average book today. Bigass fonts, dull content, near no mistery or troubles to solve.
- jollyllama 2y ago
  Here in the USA, in the Sunday comics section, a lot of newspapers had "Slylock Fox", which had much the same format.
  - anthk 2y ago
    It loooks close: http://markwestwriter.blogspot.com/2013/07/nostalgic-for-my-childhood-adventures.html http://markwestwriter.blogspot.com/2013/07/nostalgic-for-my-... But there were just four independent stories in a single book, and there was a mistery/issue to solve every even page related to that mistery, most of them related to seek new hints, as you would do with an adventure game.

anthk 2y ago

The Germans had 'The adventures of the Black Hand Gang', where the book was split in four mysteries to solve. In the left you had the narrative and a question/riddle to solve by looking up a big and detailled picture. Such as 'how did X main character guess that the bad guy stole something'? These books still hold up really well today with few changes.

MichaelRo 2y ago
Interesting, seems a modern book for kids. If we're at it, we can probably include Harry Potter and such? I would include then books such as the "Dunno" series (Neznayka in Russian) from Nikolai Nosov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno I read those books several times as a kid. In a pre-overly- technological society, those books are a sort of SciFi for kids, I was utterly fascinated by the contraptions and machinery employed by the little people. Particularly the car that ran on soda water and used syrup for lubricating, with a useful tap where you could get a glass of mixture to drink. By contrast, I visited the bookstore kids section a few times but seems inundated with dull, modern stories. Worse yet, I find such books on the obligatory reading list in school, there were such lists when I was a kid too but almost never read those because they suck. School is the worst selector of good literature.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  At least one of the Dunno books was set/written in an idyllic Kiev suburb at the time - Irpin.
- anthk 2y ago
  I've seen some Spanish books from Spain written from Youtubers and the quality compared to what I've got in late 80's and 90's it's abhorrent. Even a cheap $3/3 EUR 'escape-room' book based on puzzles to solve it's far better than the average book today. Bigass fonts, dull content, near no mistery or troubles to solve.
jollyllama 2y ago
Here in the USA, in the Sunday comics section, a lot of newspapers had "Slylock Fox", which had much the same format.
- anthk 2y ago
  It loooks close: http://markwestwriter.blogspot.com/2013/07/nostalgic-for-my-childhood-adventures.html http://markwestwriter.blogspot.com/2013/07/nostalgic-for-my-... But there were just four independent stories in a single book, and there was a mistery/issue to solve every even page related to that mistery, most of them related to seek new hints, as you would do with an adventure game.