Ginge Reads

The moon just as paper when a torch sines behind, A puppet display with characters from the mind. The stars how they wink, it's that alien again! Yet it moves and you spot that it's just an aeroplane. At the end of the rainbow, a pot full of gold! With leprechaun guarding, or so it's been told. While a stick in a forest is magic to own, And a rock from the seaside, a dinosaur bone. A monster which lurks to make dinner of me, Just shadows of clouds that float in the sea. Then fairies who leave a gift from their dance, Just a circle of mushrooms that grew there by chance. Vampires will get you and soon they will bite, Or is it those bugs that nip you at night? And then there's the dust that Santa Claus drops, A pot full of glitter you see in the shops. The world can be strange, and seem upside down As an adult grown up, with no mystery around. Imagination dwindles, the magic may fade, But children will teach it's just magic mislaid. Pho...

'Cinderella' by William Creswell via Wikimedia For as long as we have been able to talk and interact, man has told stories. We tried to explain the mysteries of the world, the marvels of the universe through spoken word and illustrations that depicted both history and man’s own imagination. Tales of myths, religious pretexts, and man's relationship to the flora and fauna can be dated back to as early as 40,000 BC. As humanity has evolved, so have the stories: cave paintings turned into domestic tales of everyday life, and sacred narratives transformed into pieces of both myth and history, embellished with the fantastic and the strange whilst retaining a sense of magic. This is what we know today as a fairy tale: a story with a seemingly impossible plot, centred on human life and its interaction with mystical creatures.  Despite this interesting heritage, fairy tales and stories of the like are still stereotyped by many as being intrinsically childish and there...