German stories for children

It's like the original Grimm fairy tales. "Grim" is the best way to describe them. They weren't sweet stories to be read at bedtime; they were "morality tales" to scare children into behaving.

For instance, there was one tale about a little girl who was extremely proud of her new red dancing shoes. Her parents gave her their last coin to go into town and buy a loaf of bread so they wouldn't starve to death. Coming back, she encountered a large mud puddle across the road and in fear of mussing up her new shoes, she threw the loaf down into the puddle to step on to get across.

Of course, this being a Grimm-era tale, her parents died. She was cursed to dance herself to death. She did until she was almost at her end, when she came upon a woodcutter. She begged him to chop off her feet, which he did. He then whittled her a pair of wooden feet on which she walked painfully the rest of her life.

Yep, just the tale you want to read to your sensitive 5-year-old right before sleep.
 
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jujube said:
It's like the original Grimm fairy tales. "Grim" is the best way to describe them. They weren't sweet stories to be read at bedtime; they were "morality tales" to scare children into behaving.

For instance, there was one tale about a little girl who was extremely proud of her new red dancing shoes. Her parents gave her their last coin to go into town and buy a loaf of bread so they wouldn't starve to death. Coming back, she encountered a large mud puddle across the road and in fear of mussing up her new shoes, she threw the loaf down into the puddle to step on to get across.

Of course, this being a Grimm-era tale, her parents died. She was cursed to dance herself to death. She did until she was almost at her end, when she came upon a woodcutter. She begged him to chop off her feet, which he did. He then whittled her a pair of wooden feet on which she walked painfully the rest of her life.

Yep, just the tale you want to read to your sensitive 5-year-old right before sleep.
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I was watching these yesterday. They are indeed really grim. One was about a teen boy who tried to impress a girl he liked in school Brigitte, so he made up stories. The old head master said: You must stop lying, kicked him out of school, financially ruined his family and the headmaster married Brigitte. No way!
 
jujube said:
It's like the original Grimm fairy tales. "Grim" is the best way to describe them. They weren't sweet stories to be read at bedtime; they were "morality tales" to scare children into behaving.

For instance, there was one tale about a little girl who was extremely proud of her new red dancing shoes. Her parents gave her their last coin to go into town and buy a loaf of bread so they wouldn't starve to death. Coming back, she encountered a large mud puddle across the road and in fear of mussing up her new shoes, she threw the loaf down into the puddle to step on to get across.

Of course, this being a Grimm-era tale, her parents died. She was cursed to dance herself to death. She did until she was almost at her end, when she came upon a woodcutter. She begged him to chop off her feet, which he did. He then whittled her a pair of wooden feet on which she walked painfully the rest of her life.

Yep, just the tale you want to read to your sensitive 5-year-old right before sleep.
Click to expand...
As an adolescent I read both Grimms' and Anderson's fairy stories. I remember Anderson's tales being worse than Grimm's when it came gruesomeness. It must be said, however, that I did not read them in the original languages. Neither had been Disneyfied either.
 

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