For children

This page is still in construction. My idea is to provide my readers with children’s stories that are well written by great authors, so that they can then tell them to their own children, just like my father used to tell me stories when I was little, to distract me while he was giving me my meals (I was one of those children who didn’t like to eat). Listening to my father telling me countless times the tales of the fox and the crow, or the fox and the wolf, was one of my childhood pleasures that I most miss.

I hope you can be as talented as he was in the art of telling stories.

I had the idea of creating a page like that some days ago. I was at the elevator in the faculty where I pretended to study ( I must be a good pretender because they gave me a diploma). As it happens that I am not deaf, I heard this conversation between two highly boring (ops, I meant respectful) Professors. One of them, a woman, was desperate because her child’s school asked some parents to go there and tell a story (poor children). She has her head so filled with political theories and conspiracy theories and all that stuff that fills their minds that she couldn’t remember a decent story to choose. I almost felt tempted to recommend her some, but then the elevator stopped and I walked out, leaving the poor creature dominated by her haunting dilemma. But I am sure she found something suitable in Plato, or Nietzsche or Kierkgardeen

Most of these stories are equally suitable for those adults who still remember that they once were children too, which, amazingly, is not that common (this is a shameless plagiarism of Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s preface of his Petit Prince, but what can I say… he was right).

Please don’t let your kids drown in the process of stupidification. If they like to read, give them decent writers to read. Pleeeease, don’t give them books of Philosophy for Chidren. They are much better at thinking with their own minds than we adults are. Don’t give them books that just provide them with all the questions and all the answers. They will have time to be brainwashed when/if they go to University. Give them funny stories and sad ones too, don’t spare them of good literature just because they are kids, just let them reach their own conclusions. If they don’t like to read, a pair of rollerblades or a basketball are just as good.

My suggestions:

Jacques Prévert, Contes pour enfants pas sages.

• My favorite: Le drommedaire mécontent.

Hans Christian Andersen:

• In english, almost al of his tales.
• In Portuguese, some of his best known tales, including The Ugly Duck and The Nightingale.

Fables of La Fontaine:

• En Français. My favorites are this one, this one and this one.