Penny has to do a certain amount of reading each night for her homework. Having finished her latest book last night, she asked if tonight, she could read my copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
My copy of Grimm used to be my mother's, and it predates me by quite a bit (if its Library of Congress card number is to be believed, it was published in 1946). Being somewhat elderly, it is also lacking in any level of Disneyfication.
I thought I should warn her, a bit, so I gave her, as an example, some of the changes Disney made to the Cinderella story. Being Penny, she was fine with the stepsisters being pecked to death by birds at the end, but utterly grossed out by their cutting off their toes and heels to make the glass slipper fit.
Grossed out enough, in fact, that she made me flip through the first twenty pages or so and make sure there was nothing else utterly nasty awaiting her. I did, and promised her that although there were some threats of death and some minor bleeding, there were no more bodily mutilations.
She took the book and sat down to read, then looked up with wide eyes. "There's not, like... sex, is there?"
"Not as such, no. I mean, sometimes someone will have a baby, but they don't talk about the sex."
"Whew. 'Cause that would be really gross."
"There's romance, sometimes."
"Well, that's not as gross as someone cutting off bits of their feet."
"...I'm glad we agree on that."
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