Telling Snow White to My Daughter

My experiences on how to deliver a fairy tale without scaring, scarring or badly misleading a three-year-old girl.

Fairy tales are tough. Snow White recently got a billion-dollar retailer of old stories into trouble, before the movie even came out. Surprisingly, I can relate. It’s a tricky, peculiar tale.

Even if you’re one of those parents who tries try to raise your kid with wooden toys, organic food and gender-neutral pronouns, you can’t stop fairy tales. Fairy tales leap from our preconscious murk onto lunchboxes and sippy cups in a single bound. Next thing you know, your unruly cherub is demanding to hear Snow White — and threatening to stay up all night unless those demands are met.

Snow White is not my idea. But given the division of labor my wife and I had drawn up for the nightly bedtime proceedings of my then-three-year-old daughter, the story was coming out of my mouth just about every night for the better part of a year.

Shortly after Miriam turned three, when she started asking for Snow White, I checked the Wikipedia page for half a minute, tucked her in and started the talking. But as I did, it soon became clear that Snow White is a minefield.