Snow White and fairy tales

Fairy tales have always fascinated me -- they were a staple at bedtimes growing up, maybe because my mother was a children's librarian before she married and had a particularly good grasp on storytelling. The dark scariness and happy endings where good triumphed and the princess married the handsome prince shaped my expectations about life. Yes, it would be hard but in the end, justice would win out.

When the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was reissued in 1987, I took my oldest daughter, who was all of three years old. She was bored with the trilling singing and simplistic animation (she loved The Little Mermaid, which Disney released in 1989). We continued to read fairy tales and, even though she's all grown up now, she's still a devotee.

Modern-day evil queen on Once Upon A Time

These days fairy tales seem to be enjoying something of a resurgence.  The story of Snow White has been made into two movies this year and is the basis for the current TV show Once Upon a Time. In the first movie, Mirror, Mirror, Julia Roberts played the Evil Queen, while Charlize Theron was cast in the juicy role of the queen for Snow White and the Huntsman. I missed the first movie but loved the second movie's interpretation of the classic story. It was less than faithful, but enthralling for its visual and special effects.

There are scary parts to most fairy tales, like when the evil queen makes the poison apple for Snow White. But, in the end, the evil person meets with an often grisly death and the good people live happily ever after. Snow White and her handsome prince marry, but the evil queen is forced to put on white hot iron slippers and dance until she drops down dead.That's the way life is too -- we live in a fairy tale and just don't know it. Time to start reading ...