The impression of children in Taiwan towards traditional settings of fairy tales is generally confined within a certain range of places like castles, forests and country huts. The ethnic background of characters in such texts is also limitedly presented as a Caucasian group of people. Such a condition may be resulted from the massive input of Western mainstream fairy-tale productions, both old (the Grimms’) and later (Disney’s) versions, into children’s early reception of the genre. As a result, fixed and stereotypical presumptions about where should a fairy tale occur and who should appear in it are therefore induced. The research result from a qualitative study interviewing 10 Taiwanese fourth or fifth graders provides proof to support such an assumption. Furthermore, by offering in the research picture books with multicultural fairy-tale settings such as Lon Po Po: A Little Red Riding Hood Story from China (1996) by Ed Young and Pretty Selma: A Little Red Riding Hood Story from Africa (2007) or unexpected ones like Snow White in New York (1990) by Fiona French and The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark (2007) by Will Grace and Ken Geist to the research participants, the study also aims to both present the benefits those children gained from reading the selected texts with uncustomary story backdrops and hence validate the proposition of expanding youngsters’ beliefs towards fairy tales. By receiving the idea that fairy tales are not necessarily bound to take place in specific areas or locations, the elementary school students get to perceive a whole new world about the genre.
About the presenterChieh-Lan Li
Chieh-Lan (Winnie) Li got her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis of Children’s Literature under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Hade at The Penn State University. As an experienced college instructor, she has taught plenty of courses (including “Teaching Children’s Literature”), both in the States and in Taiwan. Her research interests include fairy tale studies, especially contemporary reworked fairy tales for children and children’s oral and visual responses to such texts, with background knowledge of classic versions of fairy tales. She is now an assistant professor at Jinwen University of Science and Technology.