The Goose Girl

The Goose Girl is a story from the Brothers Grimm, retold by Eric A. Kimmel and illustrated by Robert Sauber.

Fairy Tale

4th - 6th Grade

2 out of 5

A princess, traveling with her maid, is on her way to meet the prince she is going to marry. The maid forces her to switch places with her so that she can marry the prince instead. The maid marries the prince and has the real princess killed.

This fairy tale seemed like it would be a good one from the cover and first page but I guess I really should not read a book by its cover. This book was not appropriate for the age group that it was aimed at. It was gruesome and a little scary. The mother pokes herself with a pin so that she will bleed on a handkerchief for her daughter, the princess, to take with her on her trip to meet the prince. It got much more worse, the maid has the princess killed. The princess is killed by having her placed naked into a barrel lined with sharp spikes and having that barrel drug down the streets until she is dead. Another gruesome detail they described was having the horse killed and its head hung over a gate. I think that this details were unnecessary and made it not your typical, happy ending fairy tale.

The Goose Girl really has no place in a classroom. It is inappropriate. I imagine it would be scary for little kids to read and hear about the deaths of the horse and princess. The only way that it could fit is into  the topic of fairy tales but it would not be appropriate for a young classroom. It may be useable in a middle school classroom but there are many other books that you could use that are more classroom appropriate and also just overall better fairy tales.